In the dynamic healthcare industry, navigating rapidly changing market situations necessitates an ongoing comprehensive grasp of markets and patients. Businesses require robust market research to make sense of fast-moving, competitive, and complex business environments. Establishing differentiation based on product, market, cost, or brand value, while maintaining a patient-centric approach is what distinguishes the winners from the rest.
Through extensive market research and analysis, a healthcare market assessment study can assist healthcare firms in identifying such differentiation opportunities. Market assessment studies, which employ both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, provide healthcare firms with strategic guidance for understanding patient needs, identifying new demands and opportunities, and competing successfully.
Constantly evolving challenges in the healthcare market
In order to establish a strong foothold in your target therapeutic area, your healthcare company must have a holistic view of your target markets, while anticipating and preparing for any possible disruptions. However, it becomes challenging, as every market in healthcare has different dynamics, and has its own set systems and regulations.
1. Understanding various stakeholders
The healthcare industry is further complicated in the sense that there are various stakeholders to deal with. In order to get extensive knowledge about this ecosystem, one must delve into the needs, preferences, behavior, and expectations of each stakeholder segment, namely the patients, providers, and payers.
2. Ensuring successful product development
The next challenge comes in the form of successful product development. The research and development of drugs and medical equipment bear high costs, but low approval rates. Studies show that only 10% of drugs go to market, following phase 1 trials. Also, as patient preferences continue changing, it becomes difficult to align your R&D strategies with such disruptions.
3. Choosing the right network of partners
A healthcare company’s success also depends on having the right network of partners. The concept of partnership in this space does not solely relate to medical domain expertise, since there are other partners, such as distributors, clinics, and hospitals, along with legal firms that can challenge and check the regulatory aspects of your product.
Furthermore, in a multi-sided market, you will need to create features for patients as well as providers (patients to doctors, as well as doctors to patients – in the future). For testing and iterating your product and value proposition repeatedly, you’ll need access to each of these unique users. Building a strong partnership network can also help you run test projects in friendly environments and benefit from their referrals. However, choosing the right partner that can align with your company’s values, becomes an issue with the long list of available candidates.
4. Navigating the regulatory labyrinth
One of the most daunting challenges in this industry comes in the form of keeping up with the regulatory landscape. Especially with the pandemic fuelling disruptions, the regulatory landscape for healthcare products and services is constantly changing. It’s extremely important to be in the know, to ensure seamless application and approval of your products, and also avoid any legal issues in the future.
How healthcare market assessment can provide the solution
With market disruptions being a dime a dozen in healthcare, conducting market assessment studies can help your company turn them into growth opportunities. Insights acquired from healthcare market assessment can aid your company’s leadership in understanding where the company stands and the strategies required to successfully navigate the challenges and risks in your market. It is also necessary for providing the best patient care, which is critical in a people-centric industry.
Consider this instance
A leading food and biotechnology corporation wanted to gain a comprehensive view of the patient and treatment landscape, and growth opportunities for the Pediatric Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), and End-Stage Renal Disease (ERSD) treatment markets in nine countries, to aid their business expansion and assess potential competitive products.
Netscribes conducted an epidemiological study and market assessment that enabled the client to determine the size of the patient market and yearly sales of competing products. In addition, we evaluated the regulatory and reimbursement environments in the target countries. A holistic approach was taken in the studies conducted, including:
- Estimation of market sizes, including the patient population of CKD and ESRD, as well as the estimated annual sales of competitive products
- The regulatory and reimbursement environments
- The responsibilities of dieticians and medical food and supplement manufacturers
As a result of these insights, our client gained a comprehensive understanding of the markets they intended to enter and was able to plan meetings with influencers to increase patient access. Consequently, they were able to identify the new goods that will generate significant sales in the future, and prioritize their strategy accordingly.
Benefits of healthcare market assessment studies
1. Identifying and defining the market opportunity
For any healthcare company, entering a new specialty or subspecialty, or introducing a new product or service, carries risks. Working without accurate information or insight is like shooting in the dark and can result in costly mistakes. This makes it imperative to understand the market opportunity thoroughly before spending resources on expansion or entry.
A comprehensive market assessment study can help you understand the growth opportunities in your target therapeutic area (TA), by giving you an overview of the relevant clinician markets, the volume of possible procedures, and the penetration of competing technology. Additionally, it can offer your company a holistic view of the patient landscape, identify their unmet needs, as well as understand their expectations and perceptions.
2. Keeping an eye on the competition
The need for competitive intelligence (CI) is more crucial than ever in the healthcare industry as it’s continually evolving. By gathering competitive intelligence continuously, companies can stay innovative and take timely action against competitive threats.
A CI study can help in identifying key competitors and analyzing market share. It also provides an opportunity for competitive benchmarking based on your competitors’ overall business capabilities, SWOT analysis, and target segment performances. Furthermore, CI aids in evaluating the competitors’ product offerings, important therapeutic areas, unique selling proposition, recent advances, regional coverage, investments, and R&D landscape.
3. Improving business operations
In today’s post-covid market environment, healthcare industry players must not only focus on prospects for growth but also keep their company operations optimized following the constant fluctuations in market dynamics – including drug pricing mandates, issues with API sourcing, and shifting focus on covid treatments. The key to this is through access to unbiased, extensive, and trustworthy research studies.
A healthcare market assessment study can provide you with an analysis of the procurement and distribution landscape of your product, to help address the pain points and expectations of distributors, while also suggesting changes to the drug pricing and tendering strategies. It will ultimately result in a stronger supply network and improve patient access. Innovative healthcare procurement also accelerates the path to long-term efficiency and competitive advantage, and it can help nurture and defend your company’s strategic vision.
Market assessment can also include the analysis of a healthcare company’s R&D pipeline, which is a good determinant of the company’s value and future prospects and helps in calculating the return from innovations.
4. Maintaining regulatory compliance
Healthcare market assessment can provide your company with insights based on regulatory intelligence (RI) which will aid you in preparing and filing applications to the FDA and other regulatory agencies across the world, to ensure that regulatory compliance is maintained throughout the product’s value chain.
RI is critical to keep your company’s leadership up to date on current regulations affecting the development, approval, and maintenance of drugs, medical devices, equipment, and services, as well as to keep them informed of any changes to the regulations that may affect their efforts.
5. Conducting post-market surveillance
At the end of the value chain, Once you’ve successfully brought your product to market, it’s a necessity to conduct post-market surveillance. This stage includes following up with your end-users – your target therapeutic areas’ healthcare providers and patients. It can aid in enhancing customer satisfaction, drug adherence, and revenue, by addressing pain points along the patient and prescriber journeys.
It also helps in assessing your brand performance, measuring brand loyalty, and outlining reasons for brand switching. Determining your product’s success levels by assessing your consumer’s opinions regarding it, can additionally help you make changes in formulation or pricing, as well as marketing strategies.
How we can help
Netscribes provides global enterprises with full-service market assessment services in a variety of healthcare fields. We combine local expertise with extensive insight from rigorously verified physicians, allied healthcare workers, administrators, KOLs, payers, and patients, with experience working across more than 57 countries, 86 specialties, and 60 medical conditions and illnesses.
Over the last two decades, we have assisted Fortune 500 companies as well as high-potential startups in leveraging data to deal with disruption, comprehend changing patient needs and behavior, leverage technological advances, and accelerate business growth.
To know more about how we can assist you, contact us today.
