Q&A with 2024 Health Care/Pharmaceutical Research Project award winners, Sanofi and Day One Strategy
Editor’s note: Sanofi and Day One Strategy are the winners of the 2024 Health Care/Pharmaceutical Research Project award, a category in the Marketing Research and Insight Excellence Awards. The award winners were announced during a virtual celebration on November 19, 2024. To learn more about the awards, visit https://www.quirksawards.com/.
Sanofi, a global health care company who works to improve lives through science, and Day One Strategy, a global health care insight and strategy agency, teamed up for a project with the goal of bringing the patient voice into focus. The organizations used generative AI to enhance traditional value proposition and opportunity assessment for pre-launch brands.
Generative AI was used in a workshop to bring the patient voice into focus and stimulate out of the box ideas.
The organizations were able to simplify complex findings into videos generated by the AI and uploaded to a brand-specific LLM to be used as a future knowledge repository for planning future launches.
Jasmin Hussein, global brand lead at Sanofi, emphasized the broader organizational impact.
"The AI generated videos have been shared widely across the organization, both at the global and individual country level, and strengthened our communication of the brand opportunity,” Hussein said.
Nicola Bailey, director at Sanofi, and Claire Macchia, managing partner U.S. at Day One Strategy, answered questions about their award-winning project.
Describe the role of generative AI in this project.
Generative AI transformed this pharmaceutical launch planning project by serving as an active participant throughout the research process. We brought the team together as part of a workshop and used generative AI to help ideate what might be happening in the landscape. This innovative approach helped unlock insights that traditional research methods often miss.
The technology's impact was particularly evident in helping stakeholders envision future scenarios for a product launch in more than five years. Through AI-generated immersion videos, physicians could better conceptualize future treatment landscapes.
We've done a lot of market research where you try and get the doctor to think about the future. It hasn't necessarily come out because they haven’t been able to get past the present and think about it in a future way.
The project culminated in developing a brand-specific LLM. Any time we have a question, we can go into the LLM and answer it really quickly, and it links back to the original source. This infrastructure continues to provide value six months post-completion, serving as a training tool and maintaining consistency in patient understanding across the organization.
How have the results of this study impacted patients?
The study has fundamentally transformed how patient needs are integrated into launch planning. It really enabled us to bring the patient to life within the organization and got us thinking about how patient needs, met and unmet, must be addressed. It also generated ideas that we hadn't thought about or wouldn't have been able to get from traditional market research.
The research revealed crucial insights about patient care, particularly in disease management, highlighting the need to prepare for a future with greater AI integration and technological advancement in care delivery. This includes improved testing capabilities, treatment methods and patient monitoring through smart devices and wearables. The findings are actively shaping clinical trial design and endpoints, ensuring future research better reflects patient needs.
How has this study changed the way market research is conducted within Sanofi?
The project has revolutionized the company's approach to research methodology. It's made me think AI should [Nicola Bailey] always be explored as a component within market research first."
The success of the project has led to systematic changes in how research is conducted, stored and utilized.