Healthy Skepticism Library item: 16198

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Roner L.
Patient segmentation for improved compliance - and better brand management
Eyeforpharma.com 2009 Jul 14
http://social.eyeforpharma.com/story/patient-segmentation-improved-compliance-and-better-brand-management

Full text:

Patient compliance often drives patient segmentation. But although marketers routinely consider clinical profiles, they often ignore behavioral profiles, despite the significant role they can play in physician prescribing.

Marta Wielondek, Brand Director Hemostaseology at Novartis says when physicians have about five seconds to choose a product for their patients, brands must be top of mind to win.

The link between compliance and brand success

“You can’t deliver top of mind arguments for all patients at once, however,” she told attendees at eyeforpharma’s recent Patient Compliance and Communication Europe conference. “The danger is that if you try to be good for all, you’re maybe good for nothing. You have to have a specific patient group.”

Looking at efficacy, safety and compliance data, we know there are specific patient groups that benefit most from a given drug, Wielondek says. You must anchor your arguments for specific patient groups, but only when successful and established in your target patient segment, she warns.

Patient compliance, however, is a problem that has a two-fold impact on pharma, Wielondek says. The first is a very direct one: patients that could be taking a product are not, lowering drug consumption and subsequently sales.

But perhaps more importantly, she says, companies suffer a loss of brand equity because we fail to prove drug efficacy.

“We’re failing with not just doctors and patients, but also in the end with reimbursement authorities,” Wielondek says. “They’re looking more and more at patient outcomes, and not just clinical trials.”

Domino effect

If patient compliance threatens reimbursement, the effects can cascade back to sales, yielding significant impacts on R&D and the industry’s ability to bring new, innovative future products to market, she says.

Research shows, however, that doctors and patients really appreciate product attributes that support compliance. When asked about the attributes of drops to treat dry eye syndrome, Wielondek says doctors valued good drug tolerability and would stop using a product if it burned when administered.

Doctors also preferred products with long lasting efficacy, easy handling, rapid onset of action and no interference with patient activity. These attributes all promote patient adherence, she says.

“These kinds of product attributes are all big motivators for patients to continue therapy,” Wielondek explains.

And patients – compliant or not – share doctor’s feelings, she says.

Segment value driven by compliance

In the end, segment value is a derivative of patient compliance, Wielondek concludes.

“Even acute and disturbing symptoms that limit activity are not enough motivation for some patients to be compliant,” she says. “Therefore, patients behavioral profiles are critical for return on investment analysis and prioritizing target patient segments.”

We must invest our resources, she concludes, in those patients that deserve it most and are the most likely to begin – and stay on – treatment with a specific drug.”