Physician Sample….where do we go from here

Over the past few months, we have seen some interesting mergers & alliances taking place within the global physician sample space including Epocrates and M3 partnering to create the world’s “largest” physician panel, Physicians Interactive and WorldOne creating the “largest” U.S. Market Research Network for Healthcare Professionals, GFK’s announcement that they will be combining Knowledge Networks PCN panel (a very high quality panel in my book) with GFK’s US Healthcare panel and then we also had All Global, M3 and Medefield partnering to launch the ‘The Trust Alliance’, an initiative to promote industry standards and best practices.

These recent developments are on the heels of a very aggressive pricing war amongst the healthcare sample providers in 2011.   And, I suspect that we will see more of this in 2012.  Navigating through these changes as well as the posturing and positioning that comes with them can be complex.   But, having been through our fair share of M&A activity in a previous life, I believe we are well equipped to continue to make sure we are selecting the best sample solution for every project that we execute.    Not trivial decisions considering that selection of data collection methodology and sample source has a massive impact on the overall quality and accuracy of data delivered to our clients.

Here is our take…

Bigger doesn’t mean better.  Our experience working at large global companies is that it is not realistic to be the best in every market.   You might be strong in Germany and France but really weak in Japan.  The same goes for the healthcare sample providers.   While some are making progress in strengthening their offerings, nobody has the best sample in every market across every specialty group.  Educated buyers will play to the strengths of each provider.

Transparency is key and something that is lacking in our industry.   It would be a lot easier to manage sample quality if sample providers were transparent on where they are sourcing their sample.   What percentage is coming from their in-house sample sources and what percentage is being purchased from other sources?    Be wary of the companies that are hesitant to share this information.   I don’t see any good reason why that information cannot be shared.  The volume of brokering that is currently happening without the client’s knowledge is scary.

Local expertise.   If we are executing a pan-European or pan-Asian project amongst PCPs, it makes perfect sense to use one global sample supplier to execute that project on your behalf.   But, as we start interviewing hard to reach specialists in emerging markets, our view is that the input from local experts on the ground is invaluable particularly as it relates to identifying the respondent we should be targeting, designing the screener, selecting data collection methodology and validating the interviews.    For this reason, a significant portion of our data collection budget will continue to be spent with high quality, local partners worldwide.

Bundling sample purchasing and programming services.   Certainly, this one could sound a little self-fulfilling given our business model but we feel that there are a lot of benefits in having an independent company manage the sample delivery and programming services.   Having your sample provider program & host the survey as well as provide the sample, has the risk of creating a black box where it becomes almost impossible for the researcher  to understand what happened during the data collection process.    Using an independent party provides additional safeguards including utilizing digital fingerprinting and sniffing technology to identify where the sample truly came from, measuring response rates, measuring duplication, understanding what percentage of the data was replaced as a result of speeders, etc.

Sample Blending is a necessity for certain projects.   Bottom line, it is unrealistic for an individual sample provider to deliver all of the sample on every project and that is why they leverage partners.   This is the case in the consumer and b2b worlds and it is no different in healthcare.   But, you can’t just blend without any controls in place and unfortunately some of the sample providers don’t have the research backgrounds to understand the potential impact to data quality.

Sample Validation.   With the high honoraria’s being offered, there is no question that physician surveys are attracting their fair share of fraudsters attempting to work the system.   The percentage of suspect respondents that we are replacing has steadily increased over the past 24 months.  Some of these individuals are getting more and more sophisticated in their efforts.   Some panel providers don’t have the assets (technology and call centers) to validate their new panel recruits.   We need to consistently make sure that our sample providers are taking the necessary steps to validate that the respondents are who they say they are.

We all must play our part in helping to make sure that the data that we are providing to our clients is of high quality.   Ultimately, the sample providers play a significant role here and if we are all a little more diligent in selecting sample partners on additional criteria other than just price, we will be doing our industry and clients a big favor.

Posted in MRops Blog

MRops Ping Pong Tournament

Wishing all of our clients, partners and friends a happy New Year.

Our employee base is competitive in everything we do.   Check out this video on our recent Ping Pong tournament.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjFezsbqoFs

 

Posted in MRops Blog