Patient Level Data: Harvesting the Information

This is the final installment of a three-part series examining patient level data as a valuable market research and brand management tool. Your May e-Tip! notes how patient level data can be used to address strategic marketing challenges.

Discerning whether a prescription was new or just a refill was a complex task before secondary patient level data (PLD) became a reliable resource. Shortcomings in prescription tallies and sales records forced marketers to support this information with primary research to gauge their drugs' performance in the market.

Now, thanks to the availability of secondary PLD linked to a physician, users can affordably learn more about the market and their products' performance. The HIPAA* compliant data reveal how a physician's patient base looks, their prescription history and treatment compliance. Since it covers the continuum of care over time, the data can also be harvested for a host of strategic applications.

Current Applications
Marketers wanting to reposition their brand from a second line agent to a physician's first choice can use PLD to track the effectiveness of their promotional campaign. The data would expose how usage changed and whether it's different by specialty. PLD can also pinpoint how a drug is used in relation to similar therapies. For instance, firms can track whether a brand is prescribed as a standalone treatment, adjunctive therapy or switch, and modify their marketing plans accordingly.

Secondary patient level data can be applied in many other ways:

• Enable the creation, profiling and measurement of market segments for positioning and message strategy
  
• Capitalize on market shifts when a competitor's product is recalled or receives negative press
  
• Analyze patient histories to justify a drug's price based on its impact on reduced hospitalizations
  
• Establish which therapies lead to the most favorable outcomes, qualifying for formulary recommendation

Future Applications
As users become more comfortable with PLD, they'll gain greater confidence in projecting the data to the overall universe. The growing sophistication of projection formulas and market-proven success will lead to additional applications such as territory management and sales force compensation. This additional perspective will also enable marketers to jumpstart newly launched drugs by customizing messages