Validating Strategic Priorities in Pharma

Client Profile
A top-20 global pharmaceutical company with a diverse portfolio spanning cardiovascular, oncology, immunology, and rare diseases. The company invests billions annually in R&D, commercialization, and global expansion strategies. To maintain leadership, it must ensure that its strategic priorities align with evolving patient, physician, and payer needs before committing significant resources.
 
Challenge
Pharmaceutical strategy is shaped by multiple, often conflicting forces—patient needs, physician prescribing behavior, payer reimbursement criteria, and regulatory scrutiny.
The company needed clarity on:

• Which therapeutic areas offered the greatest opportunity for future investment.

• How patients and physicians perceived unmet needs within those areas.

• What value propositions and outcomes would resonate most with payers.

• Whether strategic assumptions aligned across markets, segments, and stakeholders.

Traditional strategic validation through advisory boards, payer councils, and KOL interviews was:

• Time-consuming – Often requiring months to recruit and execute.

• Expensive – Costly honoraria, logistics, and third-party facilitation.

• Limited in scope – Feedback from small groups could miss critical perspectives.

 
Solution:
Fresh.ai enabled the pharma company to stress-test its strategic priorities at scale before committing resources. By creating AI personas of:

• Patients living with chronic and rare diseases.

• Physicians across specialties (oncology, cardiology, primary care).

• Payers balancing cost-containment and value-based care.

The company was able to:

• Conduct instant qualitative interviews to uncover perspectives on unmet needs, treatment preferences, and value communication.

• Test strategic investment areas (oncology vs. immunology vs. neurology) across multiple markets simultaneously.

• Identify misalignments—for example, physicians emphasizing treatment adherence while payers focused on cost offsets.

• Validate whether proposed strategic initiatives (new therapy launches, patient support programs, digital health tools) aligned with stakeholder priorities.

 
Impact
Fresh.ai transformed how the company validated strategy:

• Strategic Confidence – Confirmed that oncology expansion aligned with both patient demand and payer willingness to reimburse.

• Resource Efficiency – Prevented costly missteps by deprioritizing investments in therapeutic areas with limited stakeholder alignment.

• Cross-Stakeholder Alignment – Highlighted gaps between patient, physician, and payer perspectives, ensuring strategies addressed all three.

• Global Relevance – Surfaced cultural differences—patients in Asia prioritized affordability, while European payers emphasized long-term outcomes.

• Agility in Decision-Making – Delivered insights in weeks instead of months, allowing the executive team to adjust its five-year strategy with speed.

• Cost Savings – Reduced reliance on repeated advisory boards and in-market pilots, saving millions annually.

 
Result
Within weeks, the pharma company validated its strategic roadmap, ensuring that its top investment areas were grounded in authentic, multi-stakeholder insights. The leadership team moved forward with confidence—knowing their strategy reflected not only market potential, but also the voices of patients, physicians, and payers.