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Although they are inexpensive and product fast results, online surveys still need to be conducted properly to be really effective. The key steps for conducting effective online surveys are:

Identify your objective
Decide what information you need
Develop a questionnaire
Conduct

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

the survey

Analyze the responses

Recommend a course of action

* Identify your objective

Online surveys are conducted to find out the characteristics, behaviors, opinions, and knowledge of a particular population. No matter what the subject matter, all surveys are conducted with an obje

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

ctive, to gather information relevant to a specific problem or situation. And the key to a successful survey is clearly identifying that objective upfront. To do that, ask yourself "what problem am I trying to solve?" The ideal objective has a narrow scope and can be clearly stated. The wider the scope,

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

the more complex your survey and the less meaningful its results. Always remember, your survey is only as good as your understanding of your objective!

* Decide what information you need

Once you have defined your objective, identify the information you need to gather to achieve your objective. If the

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

objective is clear and narrow, the information you need to gather will be apparent. Be specific and avoid the temptation to gather "extra" bits of information that are "nice to know" but not relevant to your objective. Once you have identified the information you need, you should explore the possibility

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

of gathering it from existing data sources. With an abundance of information available from corporate databases and public information sources, you might gather the information without even conducting a survey!

* Develop a questionnaire

Developing the questionnaire is undoubtedly the most important par

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

t of conducting a survey. The quality of the questions will determine the quality of the results and the effectiveness of your survey. Get tips for developing an effective questionnaire.

* Conduct the survey

Once you have developed the questionnaire, you need to test it on a few people to determine if

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

it is clearly written and can be understood by people representing your potential respondents. Testing the survey might take several iterations, but it is well worth the effort. Once you are satisfied that your questionnaire is clear and unambiguous, you are ready to conduct your survey.

If you are goin

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

g to distribute your survey through email, make sure that your email message is clear and compelling. A boring message will not get the attention of your potential respondents and decrease your response rate. Additionally, you should also remember the following things:

Address emails to a sing

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

le person whenever possible.

Always use the blind carbon copy (BCC) if you must send a single email message to a group of people.

Include a valid email address in the "From" field or the recipients will consider your message as spam.

Provide the URL that will take people directly to your s

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

urvey, if you are inviting them to the website to take the survey.

Tell recipients how to contact you if they have a problem or concern.

Identify the source of purchased email addresses so recipients know who to contact if they want to be removed from the list.

Ignore the "flame" or "hate"

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

messages you might receive in response to your email invitation. A small percentage of the recipients always take offense to something or the other.

If you are going to distribute your survey from your website, you need to consider how will get visitors to take the survey. If your site has just

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

enough traffic, you can probably place a hypertext link on your home page through which visitors can reach your survey. If you have very heavy traffic, you can use a program on your web server to randomly deliver your survey to some of the visitors. However, if your website doesn't have enough traffic, y

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

ou should consider sending invitations by email or other traditional methods.

Once you have sent out notifications, responses will begin to come in immediately. For online surveys that invite individual participants (email or postal mail), most people will respond within 72 hours of receiving your invit

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

ation. Surveys that rely on passive participation (clicking on website links or responding to indirect advertising) generally take much longer. In either case, you need to decide how long to keep your surve active based on your target audience and how many responses you need to collect. If you are survey

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

ing a known group of people (e.g. customers, employees, students, etc) you might need to send out reminders to remind some people to take the survey.

* Analyze the responses

You can begin to analyze the responses as soon as you receive them. Unlike traditional methods, online surveys make it possible t

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

o analyze responses without human intervention. Responses are received in electronic format and immediately added to a database. Once in the database, they can be manipulated with a variety of tools, including the survey software, statistical packages, spreadsheets, and presentation programs. The key to

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

proper analysis of online surveys is no different than that for traditional methods. You must be able to filter the data and display results in a variety of formats for effective analysis. And always remember to relate the analysis back to your objective.

* Recommend a course of action

The last step in

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

conducting effective online surveys is to recommend a course of action. With your objective in mind, you should be able to recommend specific actions as a result of your survey. Your recommendations can vary widely depending upon the nature of the problem you are trying to solve. If you cannot identify

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

any actions as a result of your survey, then it is highly possible that your objective was too broad, your information needs were incorrect or incomplete, or your questionnaire was poorly written. In these cases, your recommended action should be to conduct further study.

© Web Based Survey Software 200

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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Even the best intentions in measuring customer satisfaction are subject to problems along the way. Temptations to avoid are: Complacency
Analysis paralysis
Doing nothing with the feedback
Failing to listen to your experts
De motivating employees

No matter what the sport or business, we all have a Most Valuable Player. Surprisingly, most businesses either do not recognize the MVP, do not realize the importance of demonstrating appreciation, or fail to include the MVP in the most important business decisions or processes.

How many people are in your organization? Each has a brain. Are you using all of them? Are you leveraging the organizations brainpower?

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