Case Studies

How have our forecasts helped clients?

New Product entry

Business question

  • A biotech company, based in Europe, with no sales and marketing presence in China, wanted to know whether they could achieve strong revenue with their product in China. Their product was targeted at a rare disease, pulmonary hypertension, which was managed in intensive care, and extremely expensive.

Process

  • The PharmaForecast was customized to pulmonary hypertension for several key Cities in China to provide affordable market forecasts yearly for 20 years.

Output and benefits

  • Using the PharmaForecast model not only able to confirmed there was a sizable market but also that the focus should be in small number of cities the first year, with roll out to selected cities in year 2 and 3. (All cities were named).In addition, we were able to assist in price optimization. In this case, by lowering the price by 10%, the market value would increase significantly more. So the company launched the regulatory package at the lower price (and hence developed an asset they could out license).

Of note in this case, is that the prevalence rates of pulmonary hypertension were not available for China- indeed they were not available for most countries in the world as it is such a rare condition. This absence of local epidemiology data can sometimes happen, and where possible we use disease rates from populations that are closely aligned in terms of ethnic group, and development profile. In this case the company provided the international prevalence rates and found the assistance in market sizing, pricing and city focus beneficial.

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Affordable market for Cancer therapies in Australia

Business question

  • New cancer therapies are not receiving reimbursement in Australia, where typically all treatments covered by Medicare. The company was aware of a growing self pay market, e.g. patients were spending out of pocket on other health conditions, such as medical aesthetics, and so the company wanted to determine the size of the affordable market of 5 different cancer types and the effect on the market size and value of lowering the price.

Process

  • PharmaForecast for 5 cancer types, with 3 different price points depending on the cancer type.

Output

  • Number of people (by age and gender) per year with e.g. lung cancer, and metastatic lung cancer who can afford treatment at 3 different price points.

Benefits

  • Confirmation that there is a sizeable self pay market for cancer therapies.
  • The market size in patient number and market value terms, and the impact of price and co-payment on market size and value.
  • Information used in discussions with policy makers and healthcare providers.
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How big could our product be?

Business question

  • A large Pharma company already had strong sales of their product treating hepatitis B and achieving a good market share of drug sales in this category in China. However, as China has the largest prevalence of hepatitis B, the company wanted to know how big the potential could be. Could it be twice, or three times as much, in which case resources could be applied accordingly to optimize revenue.

Process

  • PharmaForecast for hepatitis B for the separate Prefectures*, for 3 prices points plus 3 their reimbursement schedule forecasted.
  • Key points:
    • The hepatitis B prevalence rates were forecasted, taking into consideration geographical, age and gender variation and the continued impact of vaccination over time. The prevalence was derived by applying these forecasted rates to our forecasted population by age, gender and Prefecture over time. As the PharmaForecast model links the population with their income and expenditure pattern, we then forecasted the affordable market by 3 different prices and reimbursement scenarios.

Output

  • Affordable market by 3 price points, plus 3 prices points with reimbursement, by Prefecture*.
  • Demand elasticity by price.

Benefits

  • Yes the market potential is greater than current sales.
    • Indicated the factor the market could be increased by for all prices.
  • City Focus
    • The focus in terms of Prefecture cities* is tighter than the company originally proposed.
    • Outlined the optimal number of Prefectures* to be in today and going forward.
  • Provided a tool for sales allocation decisions

*Please note we can also provide this analysis by County City too.

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Optimizing product portfolio

Business question

  • A big Pharma company wanted to "realistically" assess the market size and sales forecast of 2 hypertensive products by city in China from the demand size to compliment its drug sales forecast. There is great interest in the growth story of China and the company was keen to manage expectations of market potential with head office through forecasts they could defend.

Process

  • PharmaForecast (epidemiology, affordability and sales forecast options) for 2 hypertension products with different prices, reimbursement schedules and sales distribution.

Output

  • Market size and value of market for both products by city, with and without reimbursement, forecasted 10 years out.
  • Sales forecast by city for each product.

Benefits

  • Market segmentation by product.
  • Product strategy going forward: depth v breadth strategy. By inputting sales figures of the products into the model able to determine the relative contribution to sales increasing penetration in cities where already have presence and extending coverage to cities where they did not have coverage to build their product expansion plan.
  • Greatly assisted allocation of sales force staff, by taking into consideration the variation in hypertension prevalence rates by age, gender and geography, and the variation in affordability by geography.
  • Able to better manage head office's expectations.
  • Provided a platform to annually forecast patient funnel and access.
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Business case forecasting and infrastructure development

Business issue

  • A big Pharma company wanted to develop a way to compare the business cases for products/brands across 60 markets.

Process

  • Purchased all components of the Health databases for 60 countries, plus all Provinces and cities in China, and all States in India. Selected 16 income breaks.

Output

  • The Health database - See example
  • Workshops for staff on using demographic forecasting in business cases

Benefits

  • A database that each market can use to build business plans for products and general business development
  • A structure/platform to compare all markets
  • The best way yet company had found of assessing general affordability and hence access
  • Strong buy in by staff

"First time we could compared apples with apples in terms of affordability across markets"

"Data was more accurate than we expected"

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How big can Asia be and which countries are growth and which are mature- focus on pricing and affordable market

Business question

  • A big Pharma had done preliminary patient funnel assessment to identify the size of the affordable market for key conditions in Asia. They considered this work to be directional in focusing business effort but wished to progress this to the next stage to have a model that can be used to base resource prioritization on to maximize return on investment in Asia. The key questions were
    • How big the market in Asia is and what contribution can it have to global sales?
    • Which markets are mature and which are growth?

Process

  • Using the Health database they were able to identify the number of people who can afford treatment at 6 different price points and the patient profile in terms of age, gender and life cycle.
  • This was done across 10 Asian markets over a 10 year period.

Output

  • The affordable market and patient profile for 10 countries across Asia
  • Categorization into growth or mature markets
  • Presentation to the 10 markets

Benefits

  • Provided the backbone of the Asian strategy.
  • "Best data had yet for pricing and affordability assessment"
  • Market prioritization
  • "Develop defensible pricing strategy"
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Pricing strategy within a therapy area

Business question

  • A big Pharma company in China wanted to optimize current portfolio of diabetes, lung and breast cancer. As well as assess pricing strategy for diabetic therapy area, for current and pipeline products.

Process

  • PharmaForecast for Cities for 1) Lung cancer 2) Breast cancer and 3) diabetes
  • Detailed pricing analysis of 4 price points for diabetes treatment

Output

  • Market sizing in China for 3 products in portfolio using PharmaForecast (patient funnel).
  • Detailed pricing analysis of diabetes therapy area.

Feedback

  • "First time able to build a defensible case for request for funds for China from head office". Asian CFO
  • Greatly assisted in where to focus sales and marketing resources to optimize ROI
  • "Extremely helpful in product positioning by price within a therapy area, for current drugs, and new drugs planned over next 5 years". Asian diabetic products manager
  • Provided a structure for in market staff to use to develop business cases for products.
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How many of the bottom of the pyramid can access our drugs?

Business question

  • Typically less than 15% of Pharma sales are from emerging markets or "rest of the world". Yet the rest of world makes up over 85% of the population. Do we need a different business model in accessing patients in the emerging markets? How many of the bottom of the pyramid can access treatment and at what price?

Process

  • PharmaForecast for 8 health conditions for 8 Asian countries

Output

  • Number and proportion of the population who have the health conditions under question, who can afford treatment by different price today and going forward 10 years.

This is an ongoing project, however, the benefits will include:

  • Understand how many people can access treatment.
  • Indicate the size of other methods of financial assistance will be needed for patients to access treatment.
  • Indication of changes that can be made to the current business model to increase access to treatment.
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New prevention product across Asia: Cervical cancer vaccine

Business question

  • Cervical cancer vaccine is a new product category: prevention rather than treatment-with no previous pharmaceutical sales.
  • The key questions included:
    • How to assess the market potential and profile of women the company should be targeting?
    • Who can afford treatment, as most government payment programmes will be for teenage women?

Process and output

  • Using proprietary databases profiled the female consumers of 10 countries and forecasted the size of the affordable market for 2 price points for women of target profile.
  • Consumer profiling: Profile of women consumers by age, income, education, occupation, life cycle, number of children at home. This not only helped with market sizing, but also assisted in finalizing primary research questionnaire questions and samples when considering pricing and uptake.
  • Tested affordable market for 2 different price points across 10 markets.

Benefits

  • Profiling of women assisted with finalizing sampling profile and questions included in primary research questionnaire for pricing.
  • The testing of the affordable market for 2 different price points across assisted with selecting the optimal price and country market focus.
  • Target market profile focus- revealing new valuable market segment.
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