TDR Secondary
Services
Audit Data Services
Timely Data Resources’ Market Research Director, Michon Mahoney, has worked in the pharmaceutical industry with secondary audit data for over 15 years. Her extensive experience includes working with many secondary sources, including IMS Sales, Medical and Prescription Audits (US); IMS Global Medical and Sales Audits (MIDAS), Pipeline databases, Wolters Kluwer audits and databases, various oncology databases, pricing databases, and the services, databases and reports published by analyst services (DataMonitor, Decision Resources, Frost & Sullivan, etc.). We can help you figure out what data sources you will need, and with proper secondary data vendor authorization, we can write audit data queries, run the data for you, and then analyze it to help you learn what it really means. Recent projects have included the translation of US market definitions for a number of therapy areas into several global market definitions, running and analyzing global IMS MIDAS data, and providing suggestions as to which data measures to use for forecasting purposes. We are also currently using secondary data to determine the competitive threat posed from products in the pipeline for a client. Let us help you with your secondary data projects.
Publication plans and literature benchmarking
Market conditioning is used to create excitement about and demand for a new product prior to launch and to build knowledge, awareness and interest for marketed products. Development and execution of a publication plan ensures that a company will have the market support required for conditioning the market. A foundation for creating new publication plans or updating existing plans is literature benchmarking, whereby the market story and message of competitor products created through the pattern of existing publications in professional and medical journals is mapped against the market environment. TDR provides benchmarking analyses that include determining the number of articles, authors, messages and specific journal placements that currently are available in the market. Armed with this analysis, our clients can develop publication plans that are cognizant of competitive presence and can work to ensure that their products will be seen above the crowd.
Examples:
- A company in Phase III trials with a third product in an established drug class wanted to know how the marketing story for the first two products evolved over time, including key messages, publication volume, most important journals, and most important authors for the year prior to launch, the year of launch, and for two years post launch. This information was used to develop and implement a publication plan utilizing messages that would stand out from the crowd, as well as to select potential authors and journals. TDR analyzed over one thousand articles for this literature benchmarking project.
- A company with a marketed product with an established positioning and message platform wanted to determine how their publication history could support their current messages and plan, and to determine where emphasis needs to be placed for future publications. TDR analyzed hundreds of articles for this literature benchmarking project.
Compilation of secondary data
For market research departments already stretched to the limit, TDR provides help condensing hundreds of pages of secondary data, including syndicated reports, analyst reports, completed custom market research studies, and third party audit data such as IMS and Verispan into a single manageable and useful document or database. We can also supplement existing data with literature and Internet searches to fill in gaps. With TDR’s experience in handling large scale searches and large volumes of data, we can quickly and easily condense and organize large volumes of information.
Example:
- A market research manager leading an international development team for a Phase III product had large volumes of syndicated data and custom market research, some that were ordered for other products that may have some relevance in her market area, some that she has purchased and commissioned, and some from her international colleagues. TDR signed the appropriate third party vendor agreements and confidentiality agreements to receive all of this data, and then analyzed it and condensed it into a single PowerPoint presentation with sections such as epidemiology, current treatment practices, patient segmentation, physician segmentation, competition, etc. Within each section, data from all of the different sources is summarized onto a few pages. The market research manager uses these PowerPoint slides for presentations, and used them to quickly determine where there is conflicting or missing information that needs to be addressed.
Analogue analyses
Competitive intelligence involves understanding and applying industry best practices when developing a market strategy. When defining the product launch plan, looking beyond the typical competitors can expose successful strategies that may be applied to launching products with new mechanisms of action and new indications. TDR provides analyses that reach outside the box by summarizing best practices of market success stories. This analysis includes extensive review of secondary data and Internet sources to uncover results of research, literature placement, educational programs, marketing and selling strategies of blockbuster products.
Example:
- A company launching the first disease modifying therapy for a particular indication wanted to understand how disease modifiers for other conditions had been successfully explained and positioned. TDR reviewed secondary data, supplemented this with Internet searches, and then summarized this data into a resource document. Our client used this information to learn from the successes and mistakes of other companies that had introduced first in-class disease modifiers, and to learn more about the language used by competitors to describe their disease modifying therapies.