Hello everyone and welcome to the Meet the Expert webinar Decisions in a Dash informing your commercial strategy in your real time. I’m Jill Kettler with MMIT’s marketing team and I’ll be the moderator for our session today. I’d like to welcome our speaker Ishue Chandramouli, manager of market research at MMIT. I have just a few housekeeping items and then we’ll kick off the discussion. First, I want to let you know that the session today is being recorded and we’ll share the recording with all registrants after the session is over. So please look out for an email with a link to that. We’d also like to get your feedback on today’s webinar as well as any ideas for future meetings. I’ve pasted a link in the chat. It’s tinyURL\Ishue with a capital I that will lead you to a survey where you can let us know what you think.
Your lines will be muted for the webinar today, but we’d like to have an interactive conversation, so please type your questions into the Q&A session on Zoom so Ishue can answer them at the end of her prepared remarks. And now I’ll turn the meeting over to Ishue.
Hi everyone. Thank you so much for joining today. We’re really going to focus today on how market research can be utilized to answer key questions effectively in today’s market. So we often see quick shifts in policy and in many cases it really takes time to formulate research questions and gather the data, but the information comes much later than when it’s actually needed. So especially when we have those pressing and urgent questions, we often are looking for fast and expedited results. So today we’ll be discussing how we can use market research to gain expedited answers and to better understand what type of market research tools are most appropriate for your urgent questions. And we’ll also review how those different methodologies can be used to get you the insights that you need.
So when thinking about market research, there are a number of different categories that we think about. Market research allows for customized insights focused in product strategy, pricing strategy, competitive analysis and stakeholder engagement. But along with that, we also use market research to generally understand payer and HCP perspectives for new market events or new product launches. And ultimately we use market research to gather a better understanding from key perspectives, whether that be payers, HCPs or IDNs. And so when faced with a pressing question that may either come from your senior leadership team or it might be because of an unknown or unexpected situation in the market, expedited customized insights can really be helpful in giving you a better perspective on the market and it can give you a better understanding of how specific products can perform in the market overall.
So just going back to the market, there can be unexpected shifts, maybe that could be due to an unknown policy announcement or unexpected changes in a product’s trajectory and using market research in these instances can help shed light on what these changes mean for your organization. So in instances when you need a quick turnaround response, rapid research tools can still allow you to gain a clearer contextual understanding from payers and HCPs and discussions with key stakeholders can also initiate problem solving conversations or can help highlight a clear pathway forward. And in instances when you do have a working hypothesis, surveys can really help provide clear results through quick and efficient data collection.
So when we’re thinking about market research, we obviously have our urgent requests come in, but outside of those pressing questions, we use market research to help … Market research is really helpful in ensuring that each step in the product pipeline is well prepared for. So understanding the market and payer perceptions from the start can really ensure that your commercialization strategy is synced with market expectations. So throughout a product’s development, market research allows us to gather helpful insights for our product and brand perception, pricing limitations, access and management expectations as well. So when we’re utilizing market research throughout a product’s evolution, it allows and ensures for a successful launch strategy and optimal uptake for a new product entering into the market.
So when we think of market research, obviously there’s two main approaches that we’re considering, both the qualitative and quantitative approach. And both of these methodologies are really useful in the, I guess, whole of the market research arsenal. And they can be used both in full length research studies and in shortened studies like what we’ve been highlighting in this presentation here today. So the qualitative method allows for an exploratory approach that can provide greater contextual understanding because the moderator is able to dive a litle deeper with probing questions and really get the nuanced information from the respondents. When you’re looking for those expired answers that are more exploratory in nature, like I mentioned, in- depth interviews or discussions with four to five payers or HCPs can provide those quality insights and provide helpful reasoning and direction. When we’re considering the quantitative approach, it’s really useful in testing working theories or hypothesis to get concrete responses.
Rapid format surveys are especially useful in this instance as it allows us to gather quantifiable insights from payers and HCPs within a short timeframe so that results are available in near real time.
So when thinking about, I guess, the current market today and where we would use expedited market research, in the past year alone, we’ve seen a number of changes to the market. And so a notable one being the CMS announcement of the first 10 drugs up for price negotiation. So that was a big headline we saw this year. Obviously there were a lot of questions surrounding how that might impact the future of certain clients’ products, but alongside that, there’s also urgent questions that come in just that are product related. A product may not be doing so well in the market and they need urgent feedback on why it’s not doing so well, what is the reason holding up the uptake, if you will. And so when we’re thinking about these questions that really need expedited results and has a really quick timeline, there’s opportunities to use different market research methodologies like I’ve explained above, but MMIT also has a rapid family of products that are focused on providing these quality insights in a really shortened timeframe.
And so I want to review with you just a couple of, I guess, options that you could use to answer some of these questions that I’ve talked about just now.
So in this first scenario here, our client was interested in understanding how contracting and price negotiation for the 10 listed drugs may impact their organization’s products and the market overall. And so knowing that what we did was we conducted rapid IDIs, which is rapid in- depth interviews, which is a tool that allows us to conduct really shortened interviews with a set number of respondents, whether that be payers or HCPs. And in this case, we spoke with payers and we’re able to formulate a discussion guide that’s primed to gain further insights to the key questions that our client posed to us. So I want to break down the type of data that you’ll see from an IDI or an in- depth interview and especially in this rapid format here. So based on the responses we received, we were able to bucket out how our payers generally responded, especially to this question of do they expect to see reduced rebates for their commercial line of business?
And there’s a breakdown obviously between our payers here, but what’s interesting and nice about conducting in- depth interviews is not only do you have that quantifiable data there, but you also have the context as to why payers rate in a certain way or why they believe that the market will sway in one way or another. And we’re able to share those verbatims with you and gives you a real sense of what we’re hearing from payers, what they’re expecting in the market, why are they leaning this way? What are some of the nuances in their thinking? All of that can be gleaned from the quotes that we’re able to share with our payers and it gives a lot of context as to why payers are leaning one way or another. In this section here with IDIs, we’re also able to test different scenarios, if you will.
We can test what we payers think the impact will be of a specific situation and then they’re able to rate across that scale. But alongside that, we’re also able to determine, okay, look for further context if you will. So when a payer rates differently from the majority of the payers in the panel or if they have further context to offer, we’re able to pick apart those nuances and also share that with the client as well and really get to the nitty-gritty of what we’re hearing from our payers, especially when something like this situation is so open-ended and there’s really not a lot of concrete data out there quite yet, this really provides a lot of color and clarity for the client to understand why we’re hearing what we’re hearing from our payers. And then finally here, I think this really highlights why we conduct in- depth interviews.
We’re often looking for those more exploratory questions and we’re looking for answers to questions that may not have a lot of data to support it quite yet, but we need urgent responses. And so here you can see we were able to bucket out how payers are leaning, whether they’re a litle bit more skeptical about how this may impact the future in contract negotiation or if they’re more optimistic. And with that, we can see what they’re supporting evidence is or why they’re thinking the way they are and providing that color and clarity really gives the manufacturer or the client a better understanding of what to expect in the future. Obviously, this is a really open-ended topic and so this just gives you a sense of one scenario where you could use in- depth interviews. But say for example, there’s a market, your product is about to launch and you need some rapid feedback.
Just getting that color and clarity from payers or HCPs or whatever that might be can give you that additional context that you need to potentially support your argument to the rest of your team. So things to consider when conducting rapid in- depth interviews. So this next scenario here is really focused on how a manufacturer is looking to better understand the best way to communicate new product information to payers, and they were hoping to see how they could better improve their product adoption, if you will. So in this instance, we actually used MMIT’s rapid response, which is a quick turnaround survey and we were able to formulate specific questions that provided useful insights in creating a plan of action for the manufacturer. So similarly to above, I just wanted to break down how we’re able to show the data in different ways and how this data is helpful in producing trends and really understanding what we’re hearing from the payers.
So this question here is really focused on how frequently do payers want to see data for these specific disease areas. And this may not seem as that important of a question overall, but starting off here really gives us a baseline understanding from payers about which disease areas are most important to them and including that, how often do they want to see information about these disease areas? And this gives you a sense of what payers are looking for, what they’re really actively interested in. And so when it comes to immunology and oncology, obviously we see a lot more interest, but less interest in ophthalmology and women’s health. So it just gives you a sense of how payers are leaning and where you want to really focus your efforts, especially when it comes to disease areas that are important to the manufacturer. And then this next one here, this really tested value, how valuable certain pieces of information are when it comes to providing new product information.
And probably as a surprise to know when costs and rebates are most important to a lot of our payers here and marketing and industry support programs are least important. But with this spread and with this, I guess compilation of the data, you can really see how payers are trending across the board. You can see where there is the most value in certain topics versus the least value and understanding this type of value is just important in how you’re going to distribute information to your payers, where you should be focusing your efforts, what type of information you should be sharing more frequently versus less frequently. And the way we’ve been able to display this data allows for an easy and digestible way to understand how payers are thinking overall for this specific topic or concern.
And then finally here in this slide, we wanted to highlight how a payer’s preference for specific formats of information linked with specific product or market information. So in this instance, the counter mention allows for the most accurate depiction of where payers gain valuable information and it also helps to highlight the means through which manufacturers should focus outreach and communication for key information and distribution. So when we’re thinking about the survey methodology overall, clients are really able to obtain clear and synthesized data that answers targeted business questions in a really digestible and easy way. And in this final scenario here, this manufacturer wanted to better understand what access and management would look like for a product that had obtained an EUA designation. So with the launch date fast approaching, the manufacturer wanted to obtain multiple perspectives from payers and wanted to understand whether decision-making could be influenced by other key payer organizations.
And so what we were able to do in this setting is through Engage, which is like a web-based discussion platform at MMIT, a select group of payers are able to provide real-time responses to questions posed by the client. So in this format, the client’s able to gain individual insights from payers, but they’re also able to understand how discussions between payers may influence decision-making. So usually our engage boards are set to take place over two days and the client is actually able to review the responses in real time from the first day and then are able to ask follow-up questions on that second day. So in this scenario here, this first day we were able to assess how payers would react to a product with an EUA designation and what their expectations for management and acces involved with that. So this platform really acts as a forum, if you will, for the recruited respondents to not only answer the questions posed by the manufacturer, which is what they do, but they also have the ability to discuss between themselves on this platform without any external engagement or anything like that.
So all the influences through payers alone or through the respondents selected, which is nice to see because it allows the client to better understand how payers engage with one another and how that might impact decision making overall and whether they can sway or dissuade, I guess, in any in certain situations from leaning one way or another in decision making. And on the second day, the client has the opportunity to follow up with pointed questions in regards to what we heard from the payers in the previous day. So the ability to ask those follow-on questions can provide really useful context and clarity for the clients and it also gives the respondents the chance to dive further into their reasoning as to why they responded the way they did, what other factors they’re considering in their decision-making. All those additional probes are really helpful in just getting a full picture, full understanding of what to expect in the future for access and management in this scenario.
For day two also in certain instances, it could also be really helpful in understanding how respondents might react to scenarios that weren’t previously thought of or considered. So this approach actually allows us to both be exploratory or confirmatory, I guess depending on which method or which type of question you’d like to pursue, but the ability to ask follow-on questions to either confirm or expand on reasoning from the day before or to ask a new set of questions beyond what payers were originally thinking allows for a lot of diversity of thought and also just a better understanding overall of what the expectations are for the market generally.
So as we wrap up here, I just wanted to quickly review what we’ve discussed today. So we highlighted the numerous ways that market research can be used to get those quick and efficient insights, whether that be through qualitative or quantitative methodologies and that includes fast turnaround in- depth interviews, discussion boards or surveys. You can really get those clear and quick insights in near real time if you’re looking for it. And just to highlight, MMIT’s rapid family of products does have different ways in which we can provide quick and useful insights in a timeline that makes sense when you have those pressing and urgent questions.
Okay. Thanks, Ishue. Now we’re going to turn to some questions. Again, to ask a question, you can type it into the chat box or the Q&A box. Okay. So first question, is it possible to use multiple research methodologies in one project and what would a project like that look like?
Yeah, so it is possible to use different market research methodologies. What we do is usually it depends on the topic itself. So in certain scenarios where potentially there’s not enough information to create a survey, what we can do is conduct rapid in- depth interviews with a smaller pool of participants or respondents. And then using that information and what we’ve gathered through those interviews, we’re able to build a survey and then test it in with a broader respondent group and get more confirmatory answers. And so using that methodology gives you, I guess, the most responses, if you will, but also gives you a really clear understanding from start to finish. But in an alternate, I guess, version as well, if you’ve conducted a survey and there are some questions that potentially have … There’s some questions about how respondents have responded or there’s some discrepancy in what you think based on what you’re seeing, it’s always possible to follow up with in- depth interviews as well.
We can select a sample of participants from the survey group and then we can test them further to better understand why ratings lean one way or another and just get further context and clarity and then provide a more robust understanding of the topic overall.
Okay. And another question, when should we speak to payers versus healthcare providers? Can we get a mix of respondent perspectives in a single project?
Yeah, so I think it really depends on what you’re trying to gain from the research. When we’re thinking of payers, we’re often thinking about access because they are the controllers of access, if you will. So anything that’s really focused on getting a product onto formulary, what coverage and access will look like for their specific plans, all of that is really focused on payer conversations and it’s really important to talk to them as soon as possible in certain cases, especially as you’re considering your launch strategy. When you’re thinking of speaking to HCP providers, it’s really focused on scripts and patient access and how they’re making those decisions. A lot of their decision making may be based at their institution, it may be based because of their patient’s access, but it’s also up to patient preference and they have a clear lens into seeing why they’re prescribing the way they are and how to improve product adoption.
And there are instances when it is useful to speak to both perspectives. It’s important to get both takes to see how a product is doing or how a product will do. And so we don’t actually combine, at least for MIT, we don’t combine for in- depth interviews, we won’t combine respondent types, but we do recommend speaking to different respondents within one project so you can get both those different insights on the same topic.
Okay, great. Well, I think that’s all the time we have for today. So I want to thank everyone for joining us. We’ll be sending out a recorded version of the webinar shortly. Also, don’t forget to fill out the satisfaction survey so we can get your feedback to improve future events. The link is pasted in the Zoom chat and it’s tinyurl.com/issue. Enjoy the rest of your day. Goodbye.
