Patient Journey Market 研究

患者の旅は、患者が新しい治療法を見つける際に経験するすべてのタッチポイントを明らかにします

Patients more than ever have information and options at their fingertips.  With access to knowledge and alternatives, it’s important for Pharmaceutical and healthcare companies to understand patients.

患者が何を望んでいるかを知ることも、マーケティングの重要な要素です。医薬品業界では、こうした取り組みは患者の行動に反映され、市場調査に組み込まれています。これらはこれまで以上に重要になっています。

It’s not enough that pharmaceutical companies conduct patient journey market research. They need to incorporate all elements of the marketing process into that research. They must develop methods that can create a real competitive advantage.

Patient Journey Market Research: How Leading Pharma Teams Build Launch Advantage

Patient journey market research has shifted from a launch checklist item to a core asset that shapes indication strategy, payer evidence, and commercial execution. The teams getting the most out of it have changed how they design it.

The conventional approach treats the journey as a linear funnel: symptom, diagnosis, treatment, follow-up. The better approach treats it as three parallel tracks, clinical, transactional, and emotional, mapped against the same timeline. Each track surfaces a different commercial lever. Conflating them hides the levers that move share.

What Patient Journey Market Research Actually Reveals

A useful patient journey market research program does three things at once. It locates friction points where patients drop, switch, or delay. It identifies the decision-makers at each step, which is rarely a single physician. It quantifies the emotional weight of each transition, which predicts adherence better than clinical severity in most chronic categories.

In rare disease, the diagnostic odyssey often spans years and multiple specialties. In ulcerative colitis, the meaningful inflection is not first prescription but the moment a patient loses trust in their current biologic. In Type 2 diabetes with cardiorenal comorbidity, the prescriber shifts from PCP to nephrologist or cardiologist depending on which complication presents first. Each of these inflections requires a different evidence package.

SIS International’s qualitative work with caregivers and prescribers in achondroplasia, ulcerative colitis, and eosinophilic esophagitis indicates that the highest-leverage interventions cluster around two transitions: the shift from suspicion to confirmed diagnosis, and the moment a current therapy is judged insufficient. Brands that own messaging at these two points consistently outperform on share of new starts.

Why the Three-Track Model Outperforms Linear Funnels

Clinical track captures what is measured in the chart: symptoms, labs, imaging, prescribed therapy. Transactional track captures what the patient and caregiver do: appointments booked, refills filled, prior authorizations contested, copay cards activated. Emotional track captures what they feel: fear at diagnosis, frustration during titration, isolation in rare disease communities.

Real-world evidence and claims data cover the clinical and transactional tracks well. They miss the emotional track entirely. That gap is where most launches lose ground, because the emotional track drives adherence, advocacy, and switching behavior, none of which appear in claims.

The three-track model also clarifies stakeholder mapping. A nephrologist sits on the clinical track. A specialty pharmacy intake coordinator sits on the transactional track. A patient advocacy organization sits on the emotional track. KOL mapping that ignores the latter two understates the real influence network.

Methodologies That Hold Up Under Scrutiny

Patient journey market research depends on method fit. The wrong instrument produces clean data about the wrong question.

Source: SIS International Research

Mixed-method designs are now standard for serious launch work. A typical structure pairs forty to sixty depth interviews across HCPs, patients, and caregivers with a quantitative validation of two hundred or more patients in priority markets. In a recent SIS International mixed-method engagement in Brazilian healthcare with a target sample of two hundred respondents, the qualitative phase reframed the segmentation hypotheses before fielding, which is the value qualitative adds when sequenced first.

Geographic Variance That Changes Commercial Strategy

Patient journeys do not travel. A global journey map calibrated in Germany or the United Kingdom will mislead launch planning in Brazil, Saudi Arabia, or Korea. The differences are structural, not cultural.

Reimbursement architecture changes who controls treatment initiation. In single-payer systems with HTA gatekeeping, the payer value story dominates. In private-pay or hybrid systems, the prescriber and patient retain more discretion, and copay assistance shapes adherence. In emerging markets, out-of-pocket exposure can determine whether a patient ever fills a first script, regardless of the prescriber’s intent.

Diagnostic infrastructure changes the front of the journey. Genetic counseling capacity, specialty referral density, and imaging access vary by an order of magnitude across the markets where global launches need to land. A journey map that assumes the German referral pattern will overstate funnel volume in markets where the bottleneck is upstream of the specialist.

What Sophisticated Buyers Now Expect from a Journey Program

The bar has risen. Three expectations distinguish current best practice.

First, integration with launch sequencing and indication prioritization. A journey study that does not feed the launch readiness review or the HTA submission evidence package is a sunk cost. The deliverable should map directly to payer value story inputs, KOL engagement plans, and field force training modules.

Second, real-world evidence triangulation. Claims data, EHR extracts, and patient-reported outcomes should anchor the quantitative validation. Stated behavior in interviews diverges from observed behavior in claims; the gap itself is the insight.

Third, refresh cadence. Journeys shift when new mechanisms launch, when biosimilar competitive intelligence reshapes the payer conversation, or when a guideline update moves the line of therapy. Static journey maps age in months, not years. Leading teams treat the journey as a living asset with scheduled refreshes tied to pipeline milestones.

The SIS Position

SIS International conducts patient journey market research across rare disease, oncology, immunology, cardiometabolic, and gastroenterology categories, in markets ranging from the United States and EU5 to Brazil, Korea, the Gulf, and Southeast Asia. The work combines HCP and patient depth interviews, caregiver discussion guides, ethnographic observation, and quantitative validation, calibrated to the specific decision the brand team needs to make. The output is built to feed market access strategy, launch sequencing, and payer value story development, not to sit in a deck.

Key Questions

The discipline is not new. The expectations attached to it are. Patient journey market research that earns its budget today reads less like a research deliverable and more like the connective tissue between clinical strategy, market access, and commercial execution.

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