《Reprint》.pdfVIP

Pharma Marketing News Vol. 2, No. 7 p. 1 July 2003 Vol. 2, No. 7 ? Published by VirSci Corp. Reprint Patient-Level Data: A New Level of Analysis by Jean-Patrick Tsang, PhD and MBA INSEAD Back in the early 1990’s, information such as age and sex. It turns out prescribing information this is sufficient for most of our sales and was gathered at the marketing purposes, since a patient is pharmacy outlet level and associated with one encrypted id that is used the pharmaceutical market all along. analyst’s nightmare was This means while we do not know the name of traveling scripts. The data the patient actually we could not care less , were captured where the we can follow the prescriptions filled by any script was filled as oppos- patient over time, or “longitudinally” in patient- ed to where the prescription was written. So, if level data parlance. This is terrific news for the Dr. John Smith, who is based in Chicago, sales and marketing department since it is now writes a script for a patient who fills the script endowed with additional levers to close in on in New York, sales rep Jane Doe, who calls on Dr. John Smith’s prescription habits and Dr. John Smith, gets no credit. In short, that modify the latter’s behavior for the better! muddies the link between promotion and results, puzzling marketers as to what really Patient-level data means even more data to happened. analyze for an industry that is already replete with data. Physician-level data was the next level and soon established itself as the data source of Physician-level data, which is currently the choice for a whole array of analyses. Today, mainstay of the industry, pertains to about physician-level data is so deeply ingrained in three quarters o