The healthcare market is one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing industries. It offers treatments, pharmaceuticals and services to people who need preventive, rehabilitative or curative treatment. The Pharmaceutical industry, Biotechnology industry, Medical Device industry and several other life sciences industries in health care sector form the healthcare industry.

Veranderingen in de gezondheidszorg

As the world is increasingly global, opportunities and challenges face health industries globally.  Ageing demographics in the Developed World and some major emerging markets such as China may have profound impact on the evolution of healthcare systems, technology, industries and regulatory affairs.  Likewise, growing societies in young emerging markets can mean further complexity in these industries.  Other complexities such as the regulatory landscape in major markets such as the United States can have profound impact on global healthcare markets.

Healthcare Market Research: How Leading Pharma Firms Build Commercial Advantage

The strongest pharmaceutical commercial decisions rest on evidence gathered before launch sequencing is locked. Healthcare market research has shifted from a confirmatory exercise to a competitive instrument, separating firms that price, position, and access correctly from those that revise mid-launch.

The shift is structural. Payer scrutiny has intensified across the EU, US, and emerging markets. HTA bodies including NICE, IQWiG, HAS, and CADTH now expect comparative effectiveness evidence and real-world evidence at submission, not after. Procurement consolidation across hospital systems has compressed the window for KOL mapping and payer value story development. Firms that treat research as upstream strategy capture the upside.

What Distinguishes High-Performing Healthcare Market Research

Three attributes separate the best programs from average ones. First, evidence is built around a specific commercial decision, not a generic landscape scan. Second, primary research is sequenced to feed HTA submission evidence and the payer value story in parallel, not serially. Third, qualitative depth with prescribers, payers, and procurement leads is treated as a primary input, not a sense-check.

SIS International Research has found that pharmaceutical sponsors who integrate B2B expert interviews with payers and formulary committee members during Phase II generate materially stronger market access strategies than those who wait for Phase III readouts. The reason is mechanical. Endpoint selection, comparator choice, and subgroup analyses are still modifiable in Phase II. Once Phase III locks, the evidence package is fixed.

Where Healthcare Market Research Drives the Most Upside

Five decision points concentrate the value:

• Indication prioritization and launch sequencing across geographies
• Formulary positioning against the standard of care and emerging biosimilars
• Pricing corridors validated against payer willingness-to-pay
• KOL mapping for advisory boards, congress strategy, and publication planning
• Patient journey mapping to identify diagnostic delay, referral leakage, and adherence drop-off

Each requires a different methodology. Indication prioritization rewards quantitative payer surveys combined with epidemiology modeling. Formulary positioning rewards conjoint analysis with P&T committee members. KOL mapping rewards bibliometric analysis paired with structured expert interviews. Patient journey mapping rewards ethnographic research alongside claims data review.

The Geographic Dimension: Why Local Evidence Outperforms Global Templates

Healthcare systems do not converge. Brazil’s SUS operates differently from Germany’s statutory sickness funds, which operate differently from Japan’s chuikyo pricing reviews. A global template applied without local primary research underestimates regional payer logic.

In SIS International’s mixed-methodology fieldwork across the Brazilian healthcare market, sample sizes of 200+ across hospitals, distributors, and regulatory contacts have proven necessary to capture the gap between federal SUS pricing and private supplemental coverage behavior. The same gap exists in Mexico, Colombia, and across Southeast Asia. Firms entering these markets with extrapolated US or EU assumptions consistently misprice the launch.

Source: SIS International Research synthesis of HTA body submission requirements.

Methodologies That Carry the Most Weight at C-Level

Boards do not act on aggregated dashboards. They act on triangulated evidence where qualitative depth explains quantitative direction. Four methods carry disproportionate weight.

B2B expert interviews with payers, prescribers, and procurement leads surface the unwritten rules of formulary access. A 30-minute interview with a P&T chair often reveals more about reimbursement risk than 500 prescriber surveys. Ethnographic research with patients and caregivers exposes adherence breakpoints invisible in claims data. Concurrentie-intelligentie on pipeline assets, manufacturing capacity, and KOL allegiances reframes launch timing. Real-world evidence synthesis from registries, claims, and EHR data quantifies what controlled trials cannot.

SIS International’s CME and medical education market sizing work for pharmaceutical sponsors has shown that the highest-conviction insights consistently emerge when telephone interviews with associations, academic medical centers, and KOLs are layered against secondary syndicated data, not used in isolation.

The SIS Healthcare Evidence Hierarchy

A useful framework for prioritizing research investment ranks evidence by decision impact:

• Tier 1 (decision-binding): Payer interviews, P&T committee research, HTA body advisory feedback
• Tier 2 (strategy-shaping): KOL interviews, prescriber conjoint, patient journey ethnography
• Tier 3 (validation): Quantitative prescriber surveys, syndicated claims analysis
• Tier 4 (context): Desk research, epidemiology modeling, competitive landscaping

The error pattern in average programs is inversion. They invest heavily in Tier 4, modestly in Tier 3, and starve Tiers 1 and 2. The result is a thick deck with thin conviction. Leading firms invert the spend.

What Changes When Healthcare Market Research Is Done Well

Three commercial outcomes shift measurably. Launch readiness improves because the payer value story is built on evidence payers actually requested. Pricing holds because the willingness-to-pay corridor was tested before list price was set. Access expands because formulary positioning was sequenced against biosimilar competitive intelligence rather than guessed.

The pharmaceutical and medical device firms gaining ground share a common operating principle. They commission research to answer specific commercial questions tied to specific decisions, with named owners and named deadlines. They name the methodology. They sequence fieldwork against regulatory and clinical milestones. Healthcare market research, used this way, becomes a compounding asset rather than a sunk cost.

Key Questions

The decision discipline matters more than the data volume. Firms that ask sharper questions of fewer respondents consistently outperform firms that ask generic questions of larger panels. The asset is the question, not the sample.

Over SIS Internationaal

SIS Internationaal biedt kwantitatief, kwalitatief en strategisch onderzoek. Wij bieden data, tools, strategieën, rapporten en inzichten voor besluitvorming. Wij voeren ook interviews, enquêtes, focusgroepen en andere marktonderzoeksmethoden en -benaderingen uit. Neem contact met ons op voor uw volgende marktonderzoeksproject.