Client Stories - Care and Funding Pathways

Our Client

In-House Research has worked with Apodi for a number of years and across a wide range of projects.

Apodi’s business is focused on identifying and implementing innovative strategies with pharmaceutical clients that drive appropriate access to their medicines and transform patient lives.

While we often deliver quick turnaround, one-off healthcare professional recruitment projects for them, this particular case study looks at a larger, multi-disciplined, national research project - the fieldwork for which spanned 2 months.

Apodi approached In-House Research with a request for support in finding the appropriate HCPs to meet the brief for their client and to support them in setting up different engagement approaches to gather insight (including one to one interviews and small workshops).

The Research Brief

Apodi’s end-client are a global pharmaceutical company with interests across a wide range of diseases and therapy areas. Apodi has worked closely with them over several years supplying a number of patient facing services. Their pipeline of new medicines includes products specifically targeted for use in organ transplantation. For this project, the end client was interested in generating deep insight into pathway implementation in the relevant surgical settings across a number of UK Trusts.

The Research Objectives

The aim of this research was to gain in depth insight into the care and funding pathways which are currently in operation across a representative range of UK Trusts, from well set-up specialist centres to smaller locality units. Key areas of interest were:

• The in-depth mapping of care pathways across selected localities

• Patient journeys and touchpoints through the care system

• Comprehensive mapping of funding streams

• Variations in approach across different localities, including local interpretation of national guidance

• Therapeutic decisions, and the rationale underpinning them

• Blocks and enablers, including budgets, workforce, financial incentives and capacity

• Variability across four nations

• Interplay between primary and secondary care

• Mapping and understanding of potential future states, including defining “Service Excellence”

Our Recruitment Approach

Our first port of call was to reach out to our extensive panel of HCP specialists in order to secure the best healthcare representatives for the task. Then, to fill the remaining gaps in recruitment we undertook some desk research and contacted hospitals directly, in order to speak with specialist departments and define the best points of contact to get the right Individuals on board for the study. Through these recruitment methods, we were able to recruit a large pool of multidisciplinary specialists across the specific geographic areas of interest.

Project Success

Apodi were able to gain in depth information and views from 8 key UK Trusts (from across 4 nations), which in turn helped to map out a strategy for their client. The project was completed in under two months and within the allocated budget, providing the client with valuable high quality, detailed insights.

Over 40 HCPs were involved and opinions from a broad range of roles were obtained, including Consultants, Surgeons, Nurses, Pharmacists, Commissioners and Payers. This allowed for the development of a comprehensive, anonymised report, which answered all of the key questions posed by the client in the brief, together with additional granular detail on a range of topics which hadn’t been considered previously.

The information has been used to shape market access and trial design strategies for future product development and launch.

Post Project Review

At the end of the research, In-House Research re-contacted all respondents to gain feedback on the research workshops for Apodi, and develop a net promoter score.

The results were incredibly positive, with HCPs rating the experience of participation in the workshops an average of 9.2/10 with comments like ‘‘Participants were well engaged, making it an interesting discussion.” From the ultimate question we were able to calculate a net promoter score of 85%.

Other useful take outs were that video technology made it easy and time efficient to participate in the workshops from the comfort of home, and that the conversations were “a light hearted, friendly discussion and exchange of opinion.”

Overall Apodi were delighted. The project was delivered as planned with useful insights for the end client. Apodi remain one of our valued repeat clients, and we look forward to continuing our work with them on current and future projects.

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If you would like quick, no obligation a cost estimate for a potential project, please email Info@InHouseResearch.co.uk