Understanding the market for pharmacogenomic testing

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**The implementation of pharmacogenomics is the most innovative and exciting approach to prescription medicine since controlled trials were developed to determine a drug's safety and efficacy**. By profiling a patient's DNA, it is now possible for doctors to make tailored prescription choices, maximising the chances of choosing the right medicine, first time, and at the most effective dose. This is pharmacogenomics (or PGx).**The main benefits of PGx are expected to be:**1) reduced time to therapeutic benefit from a drug,2) reduction in polypharmacy, and3) the avoidance of adverse drug reactions, which currently cost the NHS an estimated £500m a year to manage and treat those hospitalised as a result.While public health systems are grappling with the issues around widespread implementation of PGx, which are expected to take several years to resolve, we have a solution which is already on the market enabling private individuals to order their own test. However, as this is a new technology which relatively few people are yet aware of, little is known about the barriers to implementation from a patient's perspective or how their GP or prescribing pharmacist will need to be supported to use the information we provide. Whilst many drugs already carry genetic guidance for doctors to follow, they do not routinely have access to the patient's genetic information, so are unable to consider this important factor when prescribing.We want to speed up the private implementation of PGx to enable a faster and smoother path to public health adoption in time and build trust in the technology.**Our proposal is to carry out structured market research focusing on the following groups:**1) Private self-paying patients2) General practitioners3) Pharmacists**We will carry out quantitive and qualitative analysis of the target market to understand:**1) what people's perceptions of PGx are2) what the main barriers/concerns are for the use of PGx (and how do we build trust in the technology)3) how patients are most likely to access PGx (via doctor/HCP or direct)4) how sensitive product pricing is and what level maximises uptake**The project will be divided into 3 parts:**1) large scale quantitive study2) smaller scale qualitative analysis involving a small group of patients3) smaller scale qualitative analysis involving a small group of doctors, pharmacists and HCPsThis study will enable us to speed up implementation of PGx through better patient targeting.