Greg Borden looks at some trends affecting medical marketing research and how to respond to them.

This post first appeared on Quirks.

Seeking a better outcome

Today, there are more advances than ever in the therapies, medicines, equipment, technology and approaches that provide new hope for better patient outcomes. Understanding how health care professionals view these changes and uncovering their patient treatment needs are at the heart of medical marketing research.

This post was originally posted to the Insights Association website.

Would you buy a pair of shoes that you know wouldn’t fit?

Of course you wouldn’t.

The same applies to market research projects, particularly in the medical market research space. Sure, there are tough projects and we don’t shy away when we can build a strategy or customize a plan that will deliver real value to the client and their customer.

Matching a Project Manager to the project is crucial to its success.

This article first appeared on GreenBook Blog.

If you remember the 90’s, you probably remember the Friends episode where Rachel and Chandler help Ross carry a couch up a turning staircase. (If you don’t, go watch it on YouTube. It’s worth it.)

The three sitcom friends struggle to navigate an oversized sofa around the staircase landings toward his upstairs apartment with Ross navigating. His directions quickly turn to panic as he shouts “Pivot! Pivot! PIVOT!” as the thing gets irretrievably stuck.

This article first appeared on Insights Association Website.

Sometimes, it’s the little things that have the biggest impact.

A few years ago, I was on a screening call with one of our regular panelists, a pharmacy director, and soon sensed something was wrong. His replies were brisk and his voice sounded tight. When I asked how he was doing, the story spilled out: he was developing a new service for long-term care facilities and between that project and demands on his professional and personal time, he was totally stressed out.

This article first appeared on Insights Association Website.

As Director of Client Services for MedSurvey, a medical market research company, I'm not generally in the habit of publicizing scathing online reviews of my own company. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that as a general rule, circulating a review that states “MedSurvey IS A SCAM” is not sound business practice. And yet here I am, announcing to the world, “One of our survey respondents filed a one-star review with the Better Business Bureau accusing us of being a scam.” And yes, a review like this is alarming to us at MedSurvey. But to our fellow sample companies and clients, I cannot emphasize enough: This review should be alarming to all of us.

This article first appeared on Insights Association Website.

I regularly speak with prospective and current clients about their decision-making process for choosing a vendor for their projects. Often, they make decisions based on numbers that look good on paper, only to find that these numbers do not accurately predict the success of their projects. I’ve come to understand that for many clients, selecting a vendor can sometimes feel like rolling the dice.

Physician respondents are not a limitless resource

This cover story first appeared in the Quirks Special Healthcare Issue (January/February 2020).

Building a health care-focused data collection company over the past two decades has been an interesting, rewarding and oftentimes frustrating process for me. The challenge of executing research with geographic constraints of an earlier era has been replaced by more recent concerns of adequate sample supply, vendor transparency and the quality of respondents and data.

This article first appeared on Insights Association Website.

Over the course of my 15-plus year tenure at MedSurvey, a data collection company for healthcare and life science market research, I have worn many hats. Because I joined the company early on, when it was still quite small, I had the opportunity to become closely involved in nearly every aspect of the business, from finance to project management to business development—and just about everything in between. Now, simply by virtue of having been part of a fast-growing company for so many years, I can confidently say (without bragging, of course) that I have gone from “the IT expert” to “the expert on everything.” My colleagues joke that whenever a tricky question comes up, regardless of the business area, the answer is always “Ask Gen.” And there is one especially complex question from our business development team that comes up again and again. Because the question highlights just how vital transparency is to the market research process, I believe it is crucial that we address it not only within our own company but with our industry as a whole.

An Apology for the Lack of Transparency in the MR Sample Process

This article first appeared on Insights Association Website.

When I first came to MedSurvey four years ago as Vice President of Business Development (and the first and only salesperson in the company’s history), I was a complete newcomer to the market research industry. Previously, I had worked in sales for major companies and logos, selling media and advertising solutions on a national scale and managing multi-million-dollar budgets. But with respect to market research, I was an outsider with very little knowledge of the industry. As a result, for the first six months of my new career at MedSurvey, I set out to learn everything I could about the industry, to understand how and why clients worked with us, to uncover the gaps, and to get a good understanding from clients about their needs and expectations. What I found not only surprised me—it baffled me.

This article first appeared in Quirks June/July 2019 issue

Over the past 15 years, the medical market research landscape has undergone dramatic changes. As the health care field has advanced and doctors have become more specialized, pharmaceutical companies have begun to seek survey respondents who are more specialized as well. A decade ago, a typical research project might target a list of 100 oncologists, broadly defined; today, projects may target 100 oncologists who specialize in a very specific condition, work with a very specific set of devices and are affiliated with a very specific subset of medical institutions at the forefront of their fields.