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Amanda Micklus has 20+ years of experience tracking developments in life science industries. Since joining Consulting & Analytics in 2018, Amanda has worked with pharma and biotech clients on disease landscaping and market opportunity assessments involving primary and secondary market research, building on her expertise in mining the company’s portfolio of pharmaceutical intelligence solutions. Her specialization is qualitative and quantitative research with KOLs, payers, and industry SMEs.
In this series, Citeline and Evaluate’s consulting team members discuss some of the key challenges that face the companies they work with across the pharma space. Learn more about how Amanda Micklus, Senior Manager, Consulting & Analytics, conducts primary and secondary market research to provide market opportunity assessments for clients.
Pharmaceutical companies likely have some internal market research capabilities. But when they come to a consulting team like ours, it’s because they want an unbiased view of the market and the landscape that they’re either competing in now or want to compete in. Having that independent review is really important so that there are no influences from inside their organization, and they can see all sides of the story.
In primary market research, there are both qualitative and quantitative aspects. On the qualitative side, that includes mainly one-on-one interviews that we do with different stakeholders but can encompass focus groups or advisory boards. Quantitative market research typically involves an online survey of stakeholder groups. It allows you to test out some hypotheses and gather insights, but in a more robust way with larger sample sizes.
Primary market research is about getting information from primary sources. In our world, that means speaking directly with stakeholders such as physician key opinion leaders, nurses, patients, payers, and subject matter experts in the biopharma industry.
We also often do what’s called target product profile testing, or TPP testing, in our primary market research to assess reactions to and gain insights on a potential new product, including its mechanism of action, efficacy and safety information, the route of administration, and target patient groups.
You can find a lot of information online through secondary research, or desk research, but some of it might not be accurate, up to date, or thorough enough. So we complement the secondary research with primary market research to provide a more complete picture.
Both types of research come together to support a project type we call market opportunity assessments. The primary market research with stakeholders coupled with secondary desk research will feed into a revenue forecast and a net present value [NPV] evaluation of a product
Developing and marketing a new product takes a lot of time and money. And if you don’t get an external, independent, unbiased view, you’re going into it blindly. It’s just not smart business. A customer may have a hypothesis internally about how a new drug is great, and how it has really strong efficacy. But unless and until you test that in an unbiased view, you won’t know.
You have to take into consideration market access hurdles. You may have a great drug, but if it can’t get to a patient, then it’s not really a great drug.
We’ll speak with physicians and payers to understand exactly what the unmet needs are. You may have a drug that’s been tested against certain endpoints, but they may not truly matter to a physician or patient, or not what a payer wants to see in order to justify putting that onto a formulary, for example.
A smaller company likely does not have internal capabilities to conduct market research. And many times, the client wears many hats at a small biotech. So they’re coming to us to get a better understanding of what’s in the pipeline, what could potentially compete with their product, and to gain insights on the commercialization landscape from the payer point of view.
Some of the larger companies do have internal market research capabilities, but they will often approach us because they want to validate their own assumptions.
It’s mostly around helping clients to not put on blinders regarding their drug development programs. It might be tempting to have clinical development, marketing, commercialization teams moving forward with development of their drug without really understanding that particular market and that competitive landscape. Ideally, the goal is to provide recommendations back to our clients that help them course correct. That’s the goal for us, to help our clients avoid any pitfalls.
It was focused on a dermatological disease. We had to first understand the epidemiology of that disease, so we combined research using Evaluate epidemiology data with peer-reviewed literature. We wanted to understand, from the secondary research perspective, what was the standard of care. We researched the current drugs on the market. We also wanted to know what products were in preclinical, Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III development in the same indication.
In this particular project, the drug our client was developing was not yet marketed. We conducted two sets of primary market research with two respondent types, US and European physician key opinion leaders (KOLs) and payers. We wanted to understand how the disease was being treated and what were the unmet needs.
We did a target product profile assessment with payers and KOLs to get feedback and insights on the efficacy, safety, and intent to prescribe, if this product did become an approved drug. To what percentage of patients would physician KOLs prescribe the drug, for example, was a key question.
From the payer side, we wanted to understand the reimbursement landscape. Were there any access hurdles for this particular drug? Would there be any other issues, any kind of pushback from payers? For example, would they restrict usage of this product to a very specific patient population? Would they impose step therapy [prescribing an older generic drug first] or a prior authorization? Those are the key areas our clients are really interested in.
It could be to reduce the trial duration or foster more efficient deal negotiation. It could be making sure the client’s clinical development plan is smarter by identifying endpoints that should be included.
If a client is trying to out-license a product to a partner, a bigger pharma company for instance, they can then present this independent analysis that our consulting group has done.
Sometimes a client comes with a certain hypothesis or idea, and feels very strongly about it, but we may find something different based on our research, and those messages are difficult to deliver. But ultimately, what we always come back to is the fact that we want our clients to be successful. We’re trying to address any potential issues they may face as they’re moving along in their clinical development pathway. So we provide them with what we think are the best paths forward.
My favorite part of consulting is wrapping up the research at the end to succinctly tell the story of that research and what it means for the client — what conclusions can we make, what recommendations can we give — so they can progress. Analyzing disparate pieces of information from secondary desk research and primary market research is challenging, but in a good way. I like that it forces me to think about the research I have conducted and distill it down in a way for the client to comprehend easily.
I also enjoy the people aspect of primary qualitative market research that we do for projects. Speaking one on one with physicians especially gives an important perspective that might be missed from only reviewing secondary research.
Prior to the 2010s, we saw mega-mergers, and those were major deals that we really haven’t seen the likes of since, compared with bolt-on acquisitions, which have become more in favor. We’ve had the emergence of next-generation modalities such as cell and gene therapy and antibody drug conjugates. The Inflation Reduction Act passed a couple years ago that notably included Medicare drug price negotiations. Recently we’ve seen this effort toward most-favored-nation drug pricing. Many patent cliffs have occurred, with major drugs going off patent.
I think that’s what is so interesting about this industry. There’s so much movement, so much novelty, so many new ideas, new kinds of modalities emerging, and ongoing dealmaking. All those things are fascinating to me.
We have a great consulting team, and I’m grateful and lucky to work with a group of kind people who are always willing to help and share knowledge. I’ve enjoyed being on this team because I feel like I learned so much from them. I think we all learn from each other and it’s just a really lovely group to work with.
The Citeline and Evaluate Consulting & Analytics teams offers bespoke strategic solutions derived from their industry-leading products, along with the combined resources of parent company Norstella. These insights are curated by a global team of industry experts to address unique commercial challenges and help deliver life-saving treatments to patients faster.
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