December 4, 2013 (CHAPEL HILL, NC) Thought Leader Select, a consulting firm to the life sciences industries, is working with a U.S. biopharmaceutical company on key opinion leader (KOL) initiatives in systemic lupus.
The client company, a leader in developing new medicines for difficult-to-treat auto-immune and inflammatory disorders, chose North Carolina’s Thought Leader Select to assist them with upcoming and ongoing initiatives with national and regional KOLs in the rheumatology community.
The Lupus Foundation of America estimates that there are approximately 1.5 million Americans living with lupus. About 70 percent of these cases are estimated to be systemic in nature and can affect almost any organ or system in the body, including the skin, joints, lungs, kidneys, heart, nervous system, and brain. Lupus is a major women’s health issue, with 90 percent of lupus cases affecting women. The Foundation also reports that lupus adversely affects minority women in groups such as African and Native Americans and Latin Americans in rates that are two to three times greater than the rate of incidence among U.S. Caucasian women.
Thought Leader Select, headquartered in the Research Triangle region of North Carolina, provides research and consulting services to companies in the life sciences industry, including pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device, and diagnostics companies. These custom-tailored services support the necessary and critical industry outreach to and collaboration with leading medical experts, the health care professionals that advance treatment options and promote better public health at regional, national, and global levels.
For the new KOL engagement in lupus, Thought Leader Select’s in-house research team will assess the skills, experiences, interests, beliefs, and preferences of nearly 100 regional KOLs across all geographic regions within the United States. After identifying the regional KOLs, Thought Leader Select will conduct in-depth, comprehensive profiling, in order to offer the client company a broad, deep understanding of the skills and experience, as well as the clinical and research interests of the new roster of key opinion leaders, many of whom will assist the company in the ongoing development of new medicines.
The profiling work will serve as an objective, validated analytics foundation for understanding the professional social networks of the key opinion leaders through Thought Leader Select’s Professional Impact Network (PINs) mapping service. With PINs, Thought Leader Select shows known collaborations among KOLs in key areas of thought leadership that advance medical science, such as publishing in scientific journals, basic and clinical research, and advisory board work.
Thought Leader Select’s team will also conduct qualitative research into the beliefs and preferences of the key opinion leaders within the panel, providing insights into their priorities for time spent collaborating with industry as well as benchmarking their opinions regarding available and emerging treatments in the lupus space.
The client company plans to work with the regional and national KOLs on a variety of long-term and short-term strategies, including patient advocacy programs, scientific advisory boards, and research activities .
“Thought Leader Select is honored to work with our latest new client in the treatment area of systemic lupus,” stated Neil Mellor, the company’s global business development consultant based in Toronto. “We have key experience in rheumatology, working in rare and hard-to-treat diseases, and our team has proven itself to have a keen understanding of the women’s health space in order to bring insights to bear on diseases and conditions that affect women at much higher rates. This engagement gives us the opportunity to work with a broad spectrum of our capabilities, in order to capture what KOLs are doing and can continue to do to advance medical science and provide better treatments to help people suffering from this debilitating disorder.”
About Thought Leader Select
Thought Leader Select is a Chapel Hill, NC-based private consulting firm serving the biopharmaceutical, medical device, and diagnostics industries with strategies, in-house research, and a suite of engagement tools and support for collaborating with and reaching out to key opinion leaders and centers of excellence in medicine.
Thought Leader Select has supported companies as they develop effective treatments to promote better patient and public health across more than 18 therapeutic areas and 50 diseases and conditions. Thought Leader Select’s customized work strengthens medical marketing initiatives, medical affairs outreach, and payer marketing strategies to support market access, pricing, and reimbursement issues.
Media Contact:
Brian Castle, Director of Global Marketing and Client Relations
Phone: 919-360-9690
E-mail: bcastle@thoughtleaderselect.com
