Oncology

Our team of passionate oncology experts, HRW OR:BIT, provide deep scientific, commercial, and behavioural understanding of the global oncology landscape: helping oncology brands succeed in benefiting more patients and improving lives.

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HRW OR:BIT

As a single therapeutic area, oncology presents unique challenges within its diversity of malignancies and treatment paradigms.

We understand our clients need a truly collaborative and specialist oncology partner to address oncology market research complexities, who can:

• Fully grasp the market context and landscape for oncology products, e.g., when a drug has multiple tumour indications and messages/strategies that will impact on each other

• Provide materials reflecting depth and clarity of understanding, e.g., with language that reflects the potential licensed indication or line of therapy for the oncology product in question

• Conduct interviews with moderators who understand the specifics of the product, e.g.’ the logistical steps needed for CAR-T cell therapy administration versus standard stem cell transplant or monoclonal antibodies

• Help find the right respondents e.g., treaters of rare cancers, CAR-T specialists, or metastatic cancer patients, with a lengthy project recruit and fieldwork time

Two members of our oncology market research team.
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Oncology business problems may be complex, but our goal is simple: It’s to deliver the right information to get to the heart of our clients’ objectives and to meet all key stakeholders' expectations.

The complexity of oncology as a pharmaceutical therapy area and the speed of its evolution makes it exciting and highly competitive. 

HRW’s Oncology Research: Business Insights Team (OR:BIT) are recognised as industry-leading experts for the breadth of their oncology expertise.

Our knowledge spans a multitude of malignancies – from rare solid tumours to haematologic malignancies – couple with a strong understanding of established and novel treatment modalities.

We combine our deep oncology and behavioural science knowledge to provide rich insights and clear strategic recommendations for tackling the issues and barriers our oncology clients face.

How are we different? We are:

Oncology specialists
We are recognised as leaders in global oncology market research. Our oncology Business Insights Team (OR:BIT) team comprises of 7 researchers with over 40 years of combined oncology experience and includes academic scientists, cancer patient research specialists, and diagnostic experts.
Industry experts
Our highly experienced team has completed over 250 oncology projects in the last 5 years – covering the life cycle of product development, a diverse range of respondent types, and across quantitative and qualitative methodologies.
Insightful
Our inquisitive and innovative team regularly attends key oncology conferences such as ASCO, ESMO, and ASH. We conduct self-funded research and expert panel interviews to keep up to date with latest oncology developments and share this with other members of the OR:BIT team and with the wider HRW business through internal training. 
Innovative in approach
Our combination of oncology expertise with Behavioural Science sets us apart in a competitive global landscape in which behavioural drivers of prescribing, beyond perceived efficacy and safety advantages, now have a much greater role. This integration means we can provide you with clear and actionable recommendations to help ‘nudge’ behaviour. This is supported by HRW Spotlight our proprietary and advanced techniques for cancer patient engagement.
Thought leaders
We’ve won 12+ international awards, including the EphMRA Excellence in MR Award, Best Use of Innovation (BOBI awards) and Intellus Worldwide Impact Award, and delivered scores of industry abstracts and papers.

Types of cancers and therapy modalities we apply our oncology market research work to:

Solid tumours
  • Prostate cancer 
  • Non-small cell lung cancer / small cell lung cancer (NSCLC/ SCLC)
  • Breast cancer 
  • Ovarian cancer
  • Colorectal cancer (CRC)
  • Renal cell carcinoma (RCC)
  • Bladder cancer
  • Head and neck cancer SCHN
  • Sarcoma
  • Endometrial cancer
  • Glioblastoma (GBM)
  • Melanoma
Haematologic malignancies
  • Multiple myeloma (MM)
  • Acute and Chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL & ALL)
  • Acute and Chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML and AML)
  • Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS)
  • Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma including diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL)

Core Team for Strategic Growth

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Marianne Ibrahim

Research Director - London
Marianne holds a bachelor’s degree in pharmacology and a post graduate diploma in microbiology and immunology. She moved from industrial pharmacy to market research in 2012 and found her passion ...
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Marianne Ibrahim

Research Director - London
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Kirsty Page

Research Director - Wallingford
Having joined HRW in 2009, and leveraging a degree in history that leaned heavily into story driven communication, a career in market research seemed like the perfect fit for Kirsty. With ...
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Kirsty Page

Research Director - Wallingford
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Sophie Bone

Research Director - Wallingford
Sophie developed her interest in oncology during her MSci in biochemistry, in particular studying cancer immunotherapies. She joined HRW in 2016, pursuing her interest in oncology and discovering a passion for ...
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Sophie Bone

Research Director - Wallingford
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Liz George

Senior Vice President - Manhattan
Liz came into market research with a background in strategic communication and a graduate degree in Advertising, where her research focused on activating health behavior changes in underserved populations. She ...
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Liz George

Senior Vice President - Manhattan
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Alex Bonello

Senior Vice President - Manhattan
With a background in psychology and business, Alex loves putting her curiosity to work exploring human behavior to build strong brands. She fell in love with the pharma industry from ...
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Alex Bonello

Senior Vice President - Manhattan
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Jessica Gigante

Senior Research Executive - Wallingford
Jessica joined HRW in 2022 after completing her MSc in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience from Brunel University London. Throughout her degree, she worked as a research assistant where she a focused ...
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Jessica Gigante

Senior Research Executive - Wallingford
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Oliver Day

Behavioural Scientist - London
Oliver joined HRW in 2022 after completing an MSc in Health Behaviour Change from UCL. His background is in customer insights and behavioural science, having worked with clients across healthcare, higher ...
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Oliver Day

Behavioural Scientist - London
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Case-studies

  • Prostate Cancer Treatment Drivers

    Objectives

    Our client wanted to ensure that their prostate cancer treatment was sufficiently differentiated from competitors in a crowded marketplace, creating a compelling story to convince HCPs that it is the best treatment available to use:

    • Understand choice drivers and brand perceptions 
    • Identify HCP profiles 
    • Understand current information gaps 
    • Deep dive on the importance and recall of data 
    The Research
    • Fathom review, uncover behavioural biases in existing market research 
    • 10-minute fast association test pre-work for every respondent 
    • 90-minute duos and 75-minute WATDIs across the EU5 with oncologists and urologists to give a total sample of n = 93 
    • Radar materials audit to identify ways to leverage behavioural science in the detail aid
    What did the research uncover
    • We were able to provide a granular understanding of the prostate cancer landscape across the EU5
    • We deep dived into the perceptions of the different prostate cancer treatments to understand the rational as well as emotional reactions to brands and advised potential areas for our client’s product to differentiate from competitors 
    • We provided guidance about how the client could optimize their detail aid from our behavioural science review during the Radar audit 
  • Bladder Cancer Patient Pathway Research

    Objectives

    Our client was working toward developing a comprehensive bladder cancer portfolio.  Foundational research was required to understand the complete patient journey across the bladder cancer space (non-muscle invasive, muscle invasive and metastatic) to identify unmet needs and pain points to develop communications and value add service to optimise opportunities for their portfolio of products.

    The Research
    • EU5 plus Benelux
    • Multi-faceted approach, including Patient Soulmate™ duos, Patient WATDIs, Carer WATDIs, PSO WATDIs, and WATDIs with Oncologists and Urologists to ensure we accessed the full picture of the patient journey
    What did the research uncover
    • The research identified that there were many opportunities to start conversations about bladder cancer, between both patients, their carers and their doctors, to ensure patients felt they were receiving optimal care and support.  Core topics will need to be discussed in order to make sure patients feel that reassurance and hope for the future
    • Research insights were supported by HRW’s in-house behavioural science unit, Shift, who helped to identify specific patient types / personas, relating to how they deal with their cancer.  Using this, we were able to provide our client with strategic communication recommendations that acknowledge that different personas are likely to be more motivated by one type of communication or support than another
  • Early Asset Development HNSCC

    Objectives

    A global client wanted to inform the medicine development strategy for a new treatment in the SCCHN space, in both the loco-regionally advanced, locally recurrent and metastatic setting. This research comprised two phases:

    • Mapping: Understand current landscape and create a treatment algorithm
    • Decision making: Explore drivers and barriers, including reaction to Product X in combination with IO and chemo 
    • Future: What are the anticipated changes in treatment landscape and what data future treatments will need to offer and how combinations will be used
    The Research
    • Both study phases were conducted in the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan comprising 60-minute WATDIs with Medical Oncologists and Radiation Oncologists (Phase 1) + HN surgeons and ENTs (Japan), whilst the second phase was conduced with Medical Oncologists.
    What did the research uncover

    Phase 1: Loco-regionally advanced and locally recurrent

    • HCPs face a number of key challenges when treating and managing these patients, and few treatments offer some efficacy benefit, but at the expense of QoL through toxicity.  Product X was welcomed but a number of considerations would have to be taken into account when designing a clinical trial, including the need for biomarker testing and survival data in order to build a case for the treatment and drive earlier pathway use

    Phase 2: Metastatic (de novo/relapsed)

    • As for with patients earlier in the pathway, HCPs are keen to use Product X and anticipate that the current paradigm will change, though concerns about sequencing need to be taken into account
    • Minimally acceptable improvement in OS for this regimen to be considered = 6-12 over and above the standard of care (i.e., CisRT), on average
    • In order to be widely prescribed, it would need to offer improvements of between 10 and 25%

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