When developing a commercial strategy, it’s easy to leave patients’ perspectives and experiences on the sidelines, especially when your primary concern is figuring out how to communicate the drug’s benefit to your stakeholders. In chronic therapeutic areas such as diabetes, the patient experience becomes even more important to consider. It is often difficult for patients who are diagnosed with chronic health disorders to accept that they need continuous medication support for the rest of their lives, at times even causing them to develop a serious phobia that makes them resistant to medication, leading to poor therapeutic outcomes.
Understanding the Patient Perspective
Any chronic illness, including diabetes, often makes life challenging and upsetting for patients. Even today, there is a stigma associated with what having diabetes means for many patients – periodically checking blood sugar levels and injecting insulin. Consequently, patients can feel embarrassed and resent their new lifestyle, ultimately resulting in a denial of their condition. . Such types of denial can occur for a number of reasons, including:
- Feeling overwhelmed by the sense of self-management.
- Hardships in keeping up with the healthy routine.
- Lack of encouraging conversations with relatives and friends.
- Food categorization and dietary restrictions by family members.
- Family members’ unwillingness to understand their emotions.
- Constant preaching by family and friends to lead a healthy lifestyle
Ways to Address Psychological Barriers in Chronic Therapeutic Area
Pharmaceutical executives must attempt to individualize the commercial strategy in such a way that it not only conveys the products’ value but also addresses patients’ dilemmas. For this, social media market research is instrumental.
Digital proximity among key healthcare stakeholders, including patients, is introduced by social media. It represents a realistic depiction of patients’ living circumstances, which entails a broad range of personalization that makes it possible to mine individual data and identify common characteristics among various patients within a certain demographic. Additionally, it imparts the opportunity to gain in-depth insight into patients’ expectations by conducting surveys and opinion polls. All these social media resources not only help you tailor an effective commercial strategy but also facilitate your drug development research.
Nevertheless, social media itself won’t assist in developing a tailored marketing strategy. To increase patient health literacy and remove the current psychological barriers, you must involve healthcare professionals (HCPs) and caregivers, and strengthen your customer support and sales force readiness training.
Social media is a formidable tool for pharmaceutical players to understand the psychological drivers of patients’ behavior. Additionally, the abundance of data helps enrich conversations with potential partners, key opinion leaders (KOLs), and other potential stakeholders, as well as inform future research endeavors. It imparts the opportunity to align commercial and marketing strategies in line with the patient’s expectations, further strengthening their brand positioning within the marketplace.
Psychological factors are the drivers of patients’ behavior. Taking these factors into account, you can more easily design a commercial strategy to meet their specific needs, which then encourages them to engage with your brand. KMK’s market research team can deliver a complete portfolio of evidence-based support for commercial decision-making, from early product planning through post-launch performance monitoring. Contact our team today for a hassle-free consultation!
