Optimising market research in Crohn’s disease

Despite advancements in medical therapy for Crohn’s disease and increasing awareness of the disease, the variability of living with Crohn’s disease often goes unrecognised by the media, lay people, healthcare professionals and pharma. Broadening patient research and understanding varied subgroups has never been more essential to inform robust brand planning.

In this article, we highlight two key challenges with conducting market research in patients with Crohn’s disease, the implications of these challenges, as well as solutions that pharmaceutical insights teams should consider when conducting market research with patients to inform their brand strategy.

1) The reliance on simplistic disease categorisations 

Background: Crohn’s disease categorisation is complicated, but gastroenterologists typically use two systems to evaluate what type of disease a patient has:

• Where the inflammation is identified in the GI tract (ileum, duodenum colon etc.).
• The extent of damage the inflammation has caused (luminal, structuring – scar tissue formation, fistulising/penetrating – abscess and fistula formation).

Depending on where the disease is identified and the extent of penetrating inflammation, the symptoms, morbidity, clinical course and need for treatment/surgery can vary significantly.

Despite all of this, in market research we often hear Crohn’s disease categorised simply as ‘mild, moderate, severe’ – naturally, to reflect how drugs are approved for use and therefore candidacy for pharmaceutical interventions. 

Implication:

• Patient population: Outside of ‘mild, moderate, severe’ depending on where Crohn’s impacts the GI tract and the extent of penetrating disease, a patient’s symptoms, morbidity, clinical course and need for treatment/surgery can vary significantly; no two patients will have the same experience or even similar symptoms!
• Research output: There are numerous implications of this on market research e.g., important patient populations may be missed if appropriate criteria are not put in place (mix of Crohn’s colitis vs ileal Crohn’s, mix of those with fistulas and without fistulas) but, importantly, market research outputs that are too generalised and miss out on important nuance.

Solution: Collaborate with a Crohn's disease expert vendor for nuanced, actionable patient research insights.

2) Recognising how active disease versus disease in remission affects market research

Background: “Active” Crohn’s disease, simply put, is the presence of symptoms or endoscopic inflammation. Crohn’s in “remission” is the reverse.

Patients can experience significant periods of remission for many years, whilst others live with symptoms on a daily basis (which, as previously discussed, can vary significantly depending on the patient).

Implication:

• Quantitative research: The current status of a patient’s disease plays a significant role in the feedback they provide in market research interviews. For example, a patient in remission is likely to view side effects of medication as significantly riskier than the potential benefits. In comparison, a patient with severe active disease is likely to be less risk-averse and more pro-efficacy. This can hugely affect quantitative exercises such as “MaxDiff” if a full clinical picture is not captured.
• Qualitative research: Patient journey research is prone to “rosy retrospection”, and especially so in Crohn’s disease when patients are currently in remission and may struggle to recount how significantly the disease impacted them when it was active. 
• Recruitment: If your target is active mod-severe Crohn’s disease, consider that this can be debilitating for patients, and methodology has to be carefully selected as they may not be able to participate in a 60-minute 1:1 interview.

Solution: In-the-moment insights are critical to capture the true impact of Crohn’s disease and hear the voice of patients who may not participate in market research. We apply cutting edge AI digital ethnography to innovate traditional qualitative research and overcome these challenges. 

Contact info@sequentis-health.com if you are looking for expert-led market research and cutting-edge AI digital ethnography to uncover high quality patient insights.