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So you heard about Taguchi testing, eh? You heard some big claims, too? Crazy people saying they increase marketing response by hundreds... thousands of percent... sounding ful

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

l of hype but maybe a little intriguing?

Is it all lies or is it the truth?

I'll break it down for you here so you can understand what Taguchi testing is -- and what all the fu

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

Examples of combination products may in

ss is about.

First, the history -- Dr. Gen'ichi Taguchi was an engineer in Japan. He was looking for a way to manufacture products at a consistent high quality -- and to lock i

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

n successful methods so they would consistently work, over and over again. He got into designing experiments.

He came up with some advanced statistical formulas that you could

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

se to test a number of different variables to see how they worked together. The cool thing here is that with his formulas you can figure out how thousands of tests would work ju

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

Combination pro

st by running a few.

Fast forward... Dr. James Kowalick (one of Dr. Taguchi's students) was working in manufacturing in the United States. One day he was walking down the hallw

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

ay when he overheard the marketing department at his company talking about the same quality-control problems Dr. Taguchi had solved in manufacturing.

Dr. Kowalick offered his he

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

p, and the use of Taguchi testing in marketing and advertising was born.

Since then, Dr. Kowalick has worked as a high-level consultant in applying the Taguchi method to adverti

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

sing, and has only taken on a couple students to teach his methods to, including David Bullock. Much of what this article is based on is David Bullock's approach.

Now, the meth

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

od -- the Taguchi method relies heavily on statistical formulas. But to run a Taguchi test, most marketers can get by with not knowing the statistics part -- there are tools tha

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

will do all the fancy calculations for you.

The important part is understanding what to plug into your test to get the best result.

You see, Taguchi tests are based on pluggin

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

Following aspects would a

g variables into "arrays." These Taguchi arrays are based on Taguchi's original formulas -- plus new formulas Dr. Kowalick came up with to specifically apply to advertising.

Th

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

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

e arrays work as road maps for your tests.

Each array tells you how many different versions of each variable you can put in. Then the array mixes them up to tell you what to te

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

st.

For example, one common array lets you test 6 versions of one variable, and 3 versions of six different variables.

This means you could test six headlines, three pre-headli

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

es, three sub-headlines, three pictures, three call-to-actions, three guarantees, and three order buttons.

Altogether that would create 4374 combinations... but Taguchi narrows

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

that down to only 18 tests you have to run to figure out what each of the 4374 would do.

When you run those tests and plug the results into your Taguchi statistics program, it k

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

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

icks back which of the 4374 possible combinations would give you the best results.

Often times -- with the right input -- this optimized ad will give you increases in response r

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

te of over 100%, and sometimes as high as 2300% or more.

The beauty of Taguchi testing and the Taguchi method is how fast it lets you test all the different combinations of vari

.

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

ables. It gets you increases which would take years of consecutive testing with previous testing methods.

So... as for Taguchi testing and its ability to increase your profits

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

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

through optimizing your marketing...

Is it all lies? No.

Are there some people in the marketplace exaggerating claims? Probably.

Is it worth learning more about? Definitely

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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