Pharma promotion research measures how doctors respond to a drug company's promotion: its sales representatives' visits, its emails, its webinars and its advertising. It tells the company which messages doctors remember, which ones change what they prescribe, and how its promotion compares with its rivals'. It is a specialist kind of pharmaceutical market research. Most of it is bought by drug companies in the United States, the largest market for new medicines.
The research uses panels. A panel is a group of doctors who have agreed to answer surveys regularly, and who are paid a fee for their time. The research firm checks that each panel member is a real, practising doctor. Some panel doctors also agree to share the promotional material they receive, such as emails and the slides that a representative shows on a tablet. Others log each representative's visit in an app. So the firm can see what every company's promotion looks like, not only its client's.
Here is a typical case. A drug company in the United States sells a tablet for heart failure. Last quarter, it changed the main message that its representatives deliver, to a new study result showing fewer hospital stays. Did doctors notice? The research firm surveys 300 cardiologists from its panel. Among the doctors who met a representative, 62% remember the message about hospital stays. Among the doctors who only received emails, 24% remember it. The panel's records also show that a rival company sent twice as many emails to the same doctors in that quarter. The survey also asks each doctor how likely they are to prescribe the tablet to their next suitable patient.
The results go to the company's pharma commercial analytics team, which combines them with sales and visit data. If visits work much better than emails, the company may spend more on visits and less on emails. The results also help the model in next best action choose a channel for each doctor. Some panel doctors are recruited through a doctor community platform.
Promotion research is different from ordinary survey software. Survey software lets anyone in a company build a questionnaire and send it. A promotion research firm brings its own panel of verified doctors, its records of the promotion those doctors receive, and the analysis. The firm usually reports results for groups of doctors, not for one named doctor, so that the doctors' answers stay private.
Indian drug companies run similar research, to learn how doctors respond to their medical representatives. Much of the analysis for American clients is also done by analysts in India.