Industry overview
What is shaping pharmaceutical
Pharmaceutical and medical-device companies need evidence from doctors, pharmacists and patients, gathered with verified respondents, strict confidentiality and careful questionnaire design.
- Prescribing behaviour is shaped by evidence, experience and access
- Pharmacies influence brand substitution and adherence
- Patient journeys reveal unmet needs between visits
Client background
A mid-sized pharmaceutical company, working in Pan-India. Client identity is withheld to protect confidentiality.
- Organisation
- A mid-sized pharmaceutical company
- Sector
- Pharmaceutical
- Team engaged
- IT & Development
- Services
- Mobile app development, CRM development, Data analytics & dashboards
Client challenge
Representatives reported visits on paper and spreadsheets, and managers lacked visibility of doctor coverage and activity.
Research objectives
- Deliver on the brief: a digital tool for medical representatives.
- Design around the real needs of medical representatives.
- Define requirements and success criteria the solution would be tested against.
- Deliver a reliable, secure solution the team can run and extend.
Target audience
The work focused on 600 medical representatives.
- medical representatives600
Audiences we typically reach in pharmaceutical
Physicians and specialistsPharmacists and chemistsNurses and allied HCPsPatients and caregiversHospital procurement teams
Geographic coverage
Coverage: Pan-India. Market: India.
- India
Research methodology
An iterative delivery approach: discovery, design, build and test in short cycles, with the client reviewing each step.
- 1Brief
- 2Field force interviews
- 3App and dashboard
- 4Insight
We built a mobile app for planning visits, recording calls, managing sample distribution and accessing approved materials, integrated with a CRM and manager dashboards.
Mobile app developmentCRM developmentData analytics & dashboards
Sampling strategy
- medical representatives
- 600
- Users and stakeholders from every affected team took part in discovery workshops and acceptance testing.
Data collection
- Requirements were gathered through workshops, process walk-throughs and a review of existing systems and data.
Data quality & validation
- Peer code review on every change
- Automated and manual testing
- User-acceptance testing with the client
- Release checklist and rollback plan
Data analysis
- Usage and performance monitoring after launch
- Defect and support-ticket trends
- Process time before and after
Key findings
- Designing around the representative’s day made adoption easier.
Recommendations
- Build on the core insight: designing around the representative’s day made adoption easier.
- Track adoption and support tickets, and plan the next release from real usage.
Business impact
- Managers could see coverage and frequency by territory, sample tracking improved, and reporting time for representatives fell.
Impact is described qualitatively.
Deliverables & next steps
- Interactive dashboard
- Deployed solution with documentation and handover
- Support and maintenance plan
- Repeat the measure after changes are in place to track progress.
- A natural follow-on question: where do patients drop off treatment?
Client identity is withheld to protect confidentiality.