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How can we help an organization move beyond their hypotheses to truly understand what it’s like living with a stigmatized mental illness?
The Challenge
With a new indication on the horizon, a global pharmaceutical company needed foundational insight into the patient journey, including barriers to diagnosis and treatment and opportunities for the brand to improve the patient experience.
Our Perspective
Individual experiences of this illness are unique and shaped by a complex interplay of multiple factors, such as how people orient themselves to the condition and how social, emotional, psychological, and logistical factors impact their journey.
This condition is often misunderstood and stigmatized, and it can be very difficult to talk about. We knew we would need to take a unique approach, offering different ways for participants to engage, to ensure they felt comfortable and safe. Leveraging anthropological techniques, we dug deep into personal experiences with empathy and sensitivity.
Our Approach
Our comprehensive review of secondary sources and online discourse around the condition led to initial hypotheses and informed discussion guides. HCP interviews (market research) provided perspective on the patient journey, including pain points to explore in the following phases. In-facility and in-home interviews with patients illuminated diverse patient experiences and pinpointed barriers as well as areas of opportunity. Patients completed Reflective Journals of their lived experiences, providing a deep understanding of their beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes throughout the course of their experience with this chronic illness. Follow-up honing calls provided even greater depth and insight refinement. Finally, a professional, empathetic video allowed for easy socialization of the findings in an impactful and efficient manner across the organization.
Our Impact
Through this research, our client gained foundational insight into patients’ experiences with this chronic illness and identified key opportunities to improve the journey. Our thought-starters for possible brand territories and target patients positioned the client to make strategic and perceptive decisions on brand positioning.
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