Articles & Blogs

Leveraging Patient-Provider Insights to Shape Commercial Strategy

In pharmaceutical and biotech market research, traditional methodologies to uncover insights from conversations between patients and providers often face significant limitations. Conventional approaches rely heavily on self-reported data from post-visit surveys or interviews, which are prone to recall bias and social desirability effects, where respondents may alter their answers to conform to perceived expectations. 

This indirect nature of acquiring information can decontextualize the conversation, missing out on nuanced interactions or non-verbal cues critical for fully understanding communication dynamics. At KJT, we advocate for amplifying the patient voice and put a heavy emphasis on holistic approaches focusing on genuine patient-provider dialogues and natural responses.

Due to privacy concerns and regulatory restrictions, direct observation or recording of patient-provider interactions can be limited, restricting the depth and authenticity of data collected. This creates a gap in genuinely capturing the complexity of patient needs and the effectiveness of physician communication within the exam room, challenging pharmaceutical market researchers to develop new methods that respect privacy yet provide richer, more accurate insights.

To overcome these challenges, we developed DialogueDxSM,  which captures authentic conversations and offers deeper insights than traditional market research methods – leveraging generative AI to analyze these interactions at scale. Our HIPAA-compliant, AI-driven, approach to speech recognition transcribes recorded patient-provider interactions. We then employ state-of-the-art generative AI technology to summarize and analyze these transcripts thoroughly.

We capture a wide variety of the topics from observation, and analyze based on your need. For example: what treatment options are discussed at the early stage of disease identification? What’s the follow-up on newly initiated treatments? What does a post-op checkup look like? What are the things that patients are most concerned about? What are physicians asking about? What language are they using? 

Our expert researchers ensure that DialogueDxSM is custom-tailored to provide answers to unique business questions. The solution is made up of the following four phases:

Phase 1: Patient-Provider Observation

  • Decodes authentic patient-provider conversations to understand how the conversation naturally unfolds, which topics are discussed, and what triggers action from the provider.

Phase 2: Patient Video Diaries

  • Explores the patient’s perspective on the successes and failures of the visit with their provider and uncovers gaps in the conversation, along with other reactions they may have to their visit.

Phase 3: Provider Interviews

  • Strives to better understand real-time provider experiences and the decision-making process in more depth and investigates behaviors identified in video diary recordings.

Phase 4: Quantitative Validation

  • Focuses on validating the language used around symptomatology and treatment decision-making and triangulating other key observational and qualitative findings.

It’s important to remember that these initial patient-provider conversations are “organic”, i.e., they’re not for research purposes. DialogueDxSM discovers and further explores the themes discovered during exam room dialogues during later research phases. Commercial teams within our clients’ organizations strive to shape their messaging and collateral to support what physicians and patients are organically talking about and to meet them where they are with a common language. In short, they use DialogueDxSM to ensure their materials will resonate and align with patient experiences.

The Impact of Elevating the Patient-Provider Conversation

After gaining a holistic understanding of the patient experience from different therapies, including patients’ initial reactions, concerns, questions, and doubts, our clients are able to craft messages and collateral for sales and marketing use. Using insights gained from the exam room, this material enhances uptake and market share by dispelling myths tied to switching to or trying a new treatment, addressing objections, and providing information about access to the therapy. Our approach defines a vocabulary of the actual language used by patients to inform marketing departments and can be tailored to different countries and stakeholder segments. 

DialogueDxSM insights help our clients understand physician behavior, treatment progression, and the competitive landscape. We also capture mentions of treatments – whether the first or last option mentioned –  and shed light on physicians’ perceptions of their options (whether positive or negative) and decision criteria for recommending treatments. These insights also uncover opportunities for label extension and help craft data-backed messaging to support conversations with payors

Last but not least, these insights support measuring and assessing brand equity and gauging patient perceptions by listening first-hand to how patients and physicians speak of brands and therapies. DialogueDxSM data provides empirical evidence to support objection handling and improving patient experiences and outcomes.

A Final Note

Pharmaceutical market research insights generated from the exam room using DialogueDxSM can inform action plans across your organization and help establish a position of thought leadership by showing that you care enough to do this work for the best interest of everyone involved.

Indirectly, these insights can inform other functions in the development of new or extended solutions to address unmet patient needs, which will lead to improved health outcomes and a positive business impact.

 

Learn more about DialogueDx and how understanding these important interactions between patients and healthcare providers can revolutionize healthcare and improve patient outcomes. Click here to watch the webinar.