Clinical Trials
OVERVIEW
Problem:
Healthcare is a growing space for Venture Capital (VC) investments. As a leading provider of financial data in the private capital market, PitchBook is losing out on $9 million in lifetime sales due to a lack of Clinical Trials information. Healthcare Venture Capital Firms have to use multiple platforms to source biotech and pharmaceutical companies to invest in.
Goal:
Provide users with a tool that cross-references different data streams to give a lens into healthcare investment opportunities and benchmark against competitors
My Role: Product Designer
Team: Product Manager, Engineering, Healthcare Analyst, Project Manager
Timeframe: 6 months
Tools: Figma, Clinical Trials API, SQL, Miro, Gong, Asana
WHAT ARE CLINICAL TRIALS
For a drug to be marketed in the US, the FDA must approve that drug to ensure safety and efficacy. The drug must undergo Clinical Trials where it is tested in people in 3 main phases.
BUSINESS NEED
Healthcare VCs & Biotech/Pharma Clients
Healthcare is the second most funded VC industry. There is insufficient information for VCs to source companies and Biotech/Pharma companies to secure additional funding.
Loss Sales Opportunities
Assuming a 5 year average customer lifetime with annual Net Renewal Rate of 133%, this represents $9.5M of total lifetime revenue opportunity in lost sales
Most Requested Dataset by Sales
Surveying the sales department for the top dataset integration requests, integration of clinical trials was the most requested by 14.75%
USERS & CUSTOMER JOURNEYS
Insights were generated from 14 client interviews. The 2 core users are Healthcare VC firms and Biotech/Pharma start-ups looking to benchmark against competitors in their disease & drug area.
Healthcare VC Firms
Anytime that we're looking at making a new investment or trying to get smart on a therapeutic area, we'll look at the broader landscape of drugs that are approved and drugs that are also going through clinical trials, and we'll use that data to benchmark what threshold does the drug of interest need in order to be successful
Aleksei, VP in Investments at SymBiosis
1. Competitive Landscaping
A healthcare VC want to make a new investment in a therapeutic area. They need to look at the broader landscape and source new potential target by using different databases
2. Valuation
Once companies of interest have been shortlisted, they Identify maturity of product profile by looking at revenue, previous financing, and drug pipelines
3. Benchmarking
They use that data to benchmark what threshold a drug of interest needs in order to be successful and determine the critical path to approval
4. Analyze and Due Dilligence
Based on analysis, analyst will write investment papers and conduct due diligence on companies they want to fold into their portfolio
Biotech/ Pharma Startups
What we do is really track the mechanisms that are related to our existing programs, position our programs within the greater competitive landscape and help to select other targets or mechanisms that may be good for our future pipeline
Sarah, Scientist & Competitive Intelligence Lead at Schrodinger
1. Tracking Competition
Companies track competitors that are in their drug and disease area, position their programs within the greater competitive landscape and identify future targets
2. Trial Planning
Once companies that are developing similar types of assets are identified, they work out what portfolios look like at the points of transaction by mapping out a clinical development plan
3. Cost Estimation
Companies have to think about the investment it's going to take to get this drug to market. How much does it cost for the size and what was the scope of those trials?
4. Secure Funding
Biotech/Pharma startups may use PitchBook to source investors for funding. They look for potential buyers who have funded other healthcare startups with their similar profile.
RESEARCH PLAN
Customer Interviews
Interviewed biotech clients and VC firms focused on healthcare
Sales Interviews
Connected with account managers aligned to healthcare accounts
Surveys
Analyzed marketing surveys from healthcare clients
Support Tickets
Looked into support tickets submitted internally to understand user need for Clinical Trials information
Sales Call
Listened to archival sales calls with "Clinical Trials" as a keyword
Diving Into the Data
To understand how to effectively display the data, my PM pulled data on the distribution of active trials
AFFINITY MAPPING & INSIGHTS
Taking all the insights from client interviews, sales tickets, and marketing surveys, my product manager and I identified trends, mapped out user journeys, and deciphered what key data points clients were asking for.
Pain Points
Multiple Sources
Users were using various sources including ClinicalTrails.gov, company websites, news sources, medical associations and PitchBook
Filtering
Finding drugs in different phases could not be achieved with the poor filtering on ClinicalTrails.gov
Lack of Data
This is out of scope since we could not improve on the baseline data from ClinicalTrials.gov
What are they asking for?
Financing Events
Clients wanted to see how funding affects a drug pipeline
Timely Information
Being able to track news and events related to clinical trials/drug/therapeutic areas in a timely manner was important
Access to Raw Data
Some customers do not want PitchBook to interpret the data for them and want access to the underlying data for analysis
EARLY WIREFRAMES
For early wireframes, we explored integrating our news crawler to show timely events, variations of how to display financial events, and alerting options.
FINAL DESIGNS & USABILITY TESTING
We validated designs with 10 clients. Notable updates include adding a chevron menu to track a company's drug pipeline, adding a drug/intervention tab, and refining the timeline to include suspended and terminated trials
Timeline & Preview Table
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We integrated the API from ClinicalTrials.gov which is the gold standard for Clinical Trials information
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VCs want to see how drug pipeline/maturity affects valuation while Biotech & Pharma startups can leverage the timeline to see how transactions/development affects financing
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Displaying the most recently updated trials in the profile tabs gives users a high-level overview of ongoing clinical trials
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The timeline view was moved to a later phase due to high dev effort
News
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By leveraging PitchBook's news crawlers and including new tagging for Clinical Trials, clients can see the most recent announcements/events related to a trial for the most timely information
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It was a pain point for users to have to source multiple platforms for the latest Clinical Trials news for a particular company
Clinical Trials Tab
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The Clinical Trials display all trials tagged to the company. The drug/intervention tab was added because clients wanted to break down the drugs at a more granular level
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The lack of filtering in ClinicalTrials.org was a huge pain point for users. Our tables have robust filtering so users can manipulate the data
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The ability to download the data was important for users which they can do in this view
IMPACT
The Clinical Trials integration is set to release in Q3 2022. We will be tracking click rates for the Clinical Trials tab and Clinical Trials News button as well as market penetration for healthcare accounts. PitchBook will be the leader in centralizing clinical trials and financial information to help healthcare VCs source companies and empower biotech/pharma companies to benchmark against competitors.
I think the visual representation is fantastic. It's very clear to me. I think it's unique. It gives me a lot of information in one visual. I like it.
Nicole, Senior Researcher at Baker Law Firm
that's what I really liked about PitchBook. It was like the news update function. So I think that having that for clinical trials will be great
Sophie, Senior Scientist at AstraZeneca
This is great because it provides a very clear view of where they are... So they really have a pipeline of already approved drugs and things like that."