When a brand approaches loss of exclusivity, the challenge is rarely just defending revenue. The bigger question is how to ensure the next asset is positioned to succeed in a market that may look very different from the one your current product entered.
Pharmaceutical companies invest heavily in developing and launching new therapies. Along the way, many seek patient journey insights to better understand the needs of their customers. In the early stages of a brand’s lifecycle, these studies often help teams identify unmet needs, refine positioning, and build confidence that they are solving a meaningful problem.
But patient needs, treatment paradigms, and competitive landscapes do not stand still. As brands mature, standards of care evolve, new mechanisms emerge, and expectations shift. The patient journey that informed a launch strategy years earlier may no longer provide the answers needed for the next strategic decision.
Preparing a pipeline asset for effective launch
This was precisely the situation facing one of our clients in immuno-dermatology. Their product was approaching loss of exclusivity, while a pipeline asset represented an opportunity for future growth. However, the disease and treatment landscape had evolved significantly since their original entry into the therapy area. Competition was intensifying, both from impending generics and biosimilars and from emerging pipeline assets seeking to address remaining white space.
The key question was not simply, “What does today’s patient journey look like?” It also needed to consider where meaningful unmet needs still exist, how treatment decisions are being made today, and where a future asset could deliver differentiated value.
Creative customisation of a typical patient journey study
To answer that question, we designed a tailored patient journey programme specifically to inform pre-launch decision-making but at the same time defending the existing asset.
Patients completed a series of video, audio and written pre-work exercises ahead of in-depth interviews. This enabled us to move beyond a surface-level understanding of the treatment pathway and explore the experiences, trade-offs and frustrations that shaped real-world treatment experience. The pre-work also provided rich patient-generated content that was used to create an immersive film by our in-house video production Living Brand Productions, which was presented at strategic activation workshops and helped stakeholders connect more deeply with the lived reality of patients.
To ensure individual experiences reflected broader treatment dynamics, we also incorporated HCP perspectives. These conversations validated key themes emerging from patient interviews, enhanced our understanding of treatment decision-making, and explored perceptions of future pipeline assets, including competitive entrants.
Generating decision-ready insights
The research revealed important gaps in the current treatment experience, including areas where existing therapies, including our client’s own brand, were falling short of patient needs. These insights directly informed clinical endpoint prioritisation, evidence-generation planning and future brand strategy for the client’s pipeline asset.
Most importantly, the work provided a decision-focused view of the patient journey. Rather than creating a comprehensive map for its own sake, the study generated the specific insights needed to guide launch planning in a rapidly evolving market.
As the industry increasingly embraces patient-centricity, it can be tempting to view patient journeys as a standard deliverable. Our experience suggests something different. The most valuable patient journey studies begin not with the methodology, but with the decision they need to inform. In this case, a refreshed understanding of the patient experience helped transform an impending loss of exclusivity from a commercial threat into an opportunity to shape their portfolio.