Reliable healthcare market research fieldwork services

Healthcare market research is one of FieldworkHub’s focus areas and we have a strong track record of recruiting patients, healthcare professionals (HCPs) and healthcare managers to take part in interviews and focus groups. We have recently recruited patients with conditions that include diabetes, haemophilia, psoriasis, eczema and joint injuries are amongst the conditions that we have recently helped to research and recent HCP recruitment projects have included general practitioners, nurses, cardiologists, oncologists, haematologists, dieticians and nuclear medicine experts.

Most countries have their own rules or codes of conduct governing healthcare market research which need to be followed and some types of research need to be approved in advance by an official ethics committee whose role is to safeguard the rights, safety, dignity and well-being of research participants. This can be a slow process (for example, in the UK the statutory timeline allows 60 days for the committee to reach a conclusion), so it’s important to establish as early as possible if this is required. Where no formal approval is required it’s still essential to ensure that any market research with patients puts their needs and concerns first. Patients should be approached with understanding and sensitivity, particularly if they have a serious or life-threatening condition which makes it more difficult for them to take part in an interview than it would be for a healthy person. Many countries also require details of honoraria paid to doctors and other healthcare professionals to be submitted to the government. Another important point to be aware of is the potential need for adverse event reporting (particularly with any research which discusses what drugs or medicines a patient is taking). Whether or not the market research is aimed at identifying issues, if a participant mentions any kind of adverse reaction to a product (e.g. “when I took medicine X, it gave me a headache”) there may be a requirement to report this to the finding to the manufacturer of the product in a prescribed format. If adverse event reporting is required then the interviewer will typically need to complete client-specific training on what to look out for and how to report it.

The approaches for recruiting healthcare professionals and patients tend to be quite different. Pharmaceutical companies and makers of healthcare equipment and other healthcare products conduct a lot of market research with doctors and other healthcare professionals, so many of them are already registered to take part in relevant market research projects with FieldworkHub and other agencies. We can also free-find other types of respondent who work in the healthcare industry – for example we have recruited general practitioners working in particular towns in the UK and people who work as medical secretaries by approaching them directly. We can also recruit patients with relatively common chronic medical conditions, such as diabetes and dementia, from our panel. However, we find that the best way to recruit patients with rarer diseases, such as haemophilia and ITP, is via the support organisations that exist for these conditions. Patients with rare acute conditions tend to be the hardest to recruit. These can typically only be found by asking doctors to refer their patients (which they may or may not be able and willing to do, depending on local rules, their workload and their views on how useful the research may be to current and future patients).