TargetRx’s LaunchAdvantage Offers Critical Insight for Successful Drug Introductions

HORSHAM, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--With the impending “patent cliff,” it is more critical than ever to effectively bring new products to market. Pharmaceutical companies need to be armed with powerful insights to make the right decisions when launching new drugs and indications, assessing licensing and co-promotion opportunities and effectively managing their pipelines. In the past, brand teams have been challenged to accurately predict new drug potential and adoption because they have had to rely on a mix of traditional market research, prescribing histories and past experience. Now, TargetRx’s LaunchAdvantage^SM is the first solution built for today’s health care market that accurately predicts what physicians will actually prescribe versus what they say they will prescribe – providing reliable forecasts that drive optimal resource allocation, effective messaging and positioning and ultimately, successful drug launches.

Powered by TargetRx’s AdvantageBuilder^SM database and validated predictive models, LaunchAdvantage was built by capturing pre-launch attitudes from more than 34,000 physicians across 75 new drug launches (representing more than 25 therapeutic categories since 2002) as well as market forces and post-launch promotional activities. LaunchAdvantage has mapped all of these against actual post-launch prescribing, creating the core predictive model and invaluable insight that enables pharmaceutical companies to make the most informed investments in drug launches.

“When forecasting product potential and adoption, most pharmaceutical companies lack the tools to understand the divide that exists between what physicians say they will do pre-launch and what they actually do post-launch– which is often very different and varies significantly by brand. Not only does this divide affect forecasts, but it also affects positioning and message development,” said Craig Scott, CEO of TargetRx. “To be accurate, pharmaceutical companies need to consider the rising number of factors that influence adoption in health care today. LaunchAdvantage – and the rest of our enhanced and expanded product suite – are designed to model the entire collection of forces that affect physician prescribing behavior and drug adoption – including product, payor, promotion and patient.”

The Great Divide: Stated Intentions vs. Actual Prescribing

While physicians’ stated/preference shares are often greatly overstated, the proportion of overstatement also varies wildly among products, as illustrated among a set of diverse launches shown in chart #1. With this wide range of variance, it is no wonder that the pharmaceutical industry has historically faced so many challenges in accurately forecasting new product adoption. This chart highlights the predictive performance of LaunchAdvantage compared to physicians’ stated share and actual share, across a variety of therapeutic categories and product types. LaunchAdvantage is a next-generation solution built for today’s complex and changing health care market with forecasts that demonstrate the product’s unique ability to hone in on actual physician prescribing behavior.

LaunchAdvantage: The Full Picture

To understand how and why a physician will prescribe a drug, LaunchAdvantage goes far beyond just collecting physicians’ intentions to prescribe and instead obtains a complete picture of all primary influencers on future prescribing. This includes systematically capturing pre-launch attitudes on product preferences, perceptions and intended adoption patterns, as well as critical market “forces” such as payor, promotion and patient. The end benefits of this validated predictive model are accurate and reliable forecasts and insights that drive optimal positioning, messaging, resource allocation and promotion decisions.

Optimal Positioning: Know the Product Attributes that Drive Prescribing

Not only is stated share inaccurate for forecasting, it is also misleading for positioning and messaging. Chart #2 shows the large difference in the importance of product attributes on brand adoption when using physicians’ stated share vs. LaunchAdvantage predicted share. Simply put, traditional methods would have you focusing on the wrong attributes and messages. In this real world example for an HIV drug launch, “Treats Low CD4” is only the sixth most important attribute, but traditional methods mistakenly report that it is the most important for this drug. Unlike traditional methods that use physicians’ stated share to speculate on the most important product attributes, LaunchAdvantage uses its predictive model to uncover the product attributes that will maximize actual prescribing.

LaunchAdvantage: How Accurate Is It?

With rich attitudinal and behavioral information captured consistently across more than 75 launches, chart #3 shows that the core LaunchAdvantage predictive model accounts for 80 percent of post-launch prescribing, while physicians’ stated share accounts for only 23 percent. This high level of accuracy elevates critical pipeline and launch decisions to a science. When including brand inputs of planned promotion and other activities, LaunchAdvantage becomes even more accurate.

LaunchAdvantage and its highly accurate predictive model are used by pharmaceutical and biotech companies for a range of applications:

• New drug launches: provides critical insight to guide brand teams in launching a new drug, including forecasts by scenario, forecasts by physician segment and patient type, optimal positioning and message platform, and much more;
• Competitive drug launches: accurately quantifies the threat posed by a competitive launch and provides insight into the entrant’s likely positioning and how to best defend share;
• Licensing and co-promote opportunities: provides a forecast and valuation of a new product overall and by scenario and physician segment, providing key information for go/no go decisions and negotiations;
• Pipeline potential: helps teams prioritize products in development by providing forecasts and valuations for pipeline products for a variety of market and clinical scenarios.

For more information about LaunchAdvantage, visit http://www.targetrx.com/trx/products/LaunchAdvantage/ or call 1.877.UKnowHow (877-856-6946).

About TargetRx

TargetRx provides pharmaceutical and biotech companies with unique insight into the true drivers of product choice and adoption for their brands, helping clients to confidently take the actions that will grow their businesses and help patients. Serving the majority of the top 30 pharmaceutical and biotech companies, TargetRx enables clients to significantly improve the launch of new products and indications, physician segmentation and targeting, creation of professional messaging and materials and sales and marketing execution and effectiveness. All TargetRx solutions are powered by the company’s AdvantageBuilder normative database and validated predictive models, created from capturing in-depth physician attitudes on the “four forces” of prescribing – product, payor, promotion and patient – on new launches, marketing campaigns and physician-rep interactions on over 500 pipeline and inline brands and modeling these attitudes against actual prescribing behavior. For more information, visit www.targetrx.com.