Early Market Testing Can Benefit Health Care

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Exactly what each of these stakeholders wants can be understood through straightforward interviews or survey-driven research before clinical trials ever begin.

What stakeholder challenges should be addressed to facilitate clinical trial success? Clinical trials can fail for many reasons other than efficacy. Patient frustrations can lead to lack of compliance. The inability to facilitate communication between patients and physicians can lead to incorrect use of medications that could alter outcomes. These types of pitfalls can be avoided by pretrial observational research.

What is the overall patient experience that will create and sustain market demand? While the drug molecule or device construction may be inalterable, many variables that make up the overall experience for patients and physicians are not. These variables ultimately influence practitioner recommendations, patient willingness to adopt, and long-term patient adherence to therapies. Experiments could be performed on ways in which:

• People become aware of their condition

• The condition is diagnosed

• Other therapies are considered

• The company's therapy is administered

• Patients and practitioners are educated about the therapy

• The condition is monitored both inside and outside the physician's office

• Pharmacists dispense medications

• Patients understand medication side effects and how to handle them

Information to define these variables can be gained through patient surveys, in-depth interviews, and observational research, as well as consultations with practitioners and other experts—all of which can be carried out before an actual drug or device is even available.

Who are the "foothold" customers, and how should they be approached? Historically, many in the health-care arena have aimed for the biggest market in order to maximize their chance of a home run. An alternative is to focus narrowly on a group that will value a therapy very highly, adopt it readily, and sing its praises. Although this shift in focus requires the pharmaceutical company to be able to prioritize "small" ideas and scale back traditional launch activities, the reward can be a handful of platforms for future growth.

In remaking its business model from blockbuster-seeker to champion of tailored drugs, Novartis (NOVN) has successfully followed this approach with Gleevec. This anticancer drug was launched initially for a rare type of blood disease affecting only a few thousand people a year, and since then has grown to be approved for six other conditions. In the process its sales have grown to $3.7 billion a year.

We often hear that experimentation is not possible when the stakes are life and death. This argument misses the point that pharmaceutical and medical device companies are in the business of science, and experimentation underlies the scientific method. This method should not stop at the laboratory's door.

Provided by Strategy and Innovation—published twice-monthly by Innosight, an innovation consultancy. Innosight's approach and proprietary tools facilitate the discovery of new, high-growth markets and the rapid creation of breakthrough products and services.

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