Synovate has extensive experience researching the pharmaceutical sector. 

The company has conducted both quantitative and qualitative projects investigating diagnosis, treatment and prescription behaviours, knowledge and attitudes; covering everyone from country GPs to world-renowned professors, specialists, practice nurses and patient advocacy groups, Dunedin to Whangarei. 

The research has usually been based around the need to develop an effective marketing, promotional or education strategy, although sometimes the learnings have expanded into the development of patient support packages and / or desk research used for predicting future incidence rates.

To aid with this research, Synovate established HealthTracker.co.nz in 2006 in order to provide a better quality of quantitative GP surveying.  This panel now has over 600 General Practitioners involved.

In 2004 a Synovate project for Roche won a Highly Commended Award in the Market Research Effectiveness Awards.

Specific research areas we have investigated include:

• The perceptions and treatment patterns of Hepatitis C;
• The Green Prescription programme run by SPARC for PHARMAC;
• The treatment of childhood asthma in the primary care setting;
• Sophisticated product / price modelling for smoking cessation products;
• Pharmacists’ pricing and recommendations in the area of weightloss drugs;
• The treatment of mild-to-moderate depression by General practitioners;
• GPs and Pharmacists’ usage and perceptions of the Pharmac website;
• The perceptions and treatment procedures of treatment-resistant depression;
• The use of PPIs amongst patients in NSAIDs and / or Cox2 inhibitors;
• The treatment of heart failure throughout New Zealand, including heart failure centres etc;
• The awareness and treatment of renal anaemia at primary care level, with a particular focus on GPs’ knowledge of EPO;
• Patient perceptions of Cox2 issues following the Vioxx issues of 2005;
• GPs’ usage of the internet and reactions to a new GP-focussed online service;
• Providing specialist questionnaire consultation services for Atlantis Healthcare’s Pharmalink GP-mailing product. 

Companies for whom we have conducted this research most recently include Novartis, PHARMAC, Airflow Technologies and Boehringer Ingelheim and Pfizer.

Older pharma clients include 3M, Astra Zeneca, Wyeth, Merck Sharpe & Dohm, Roche and HealthPoint.