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One of the most common tools used to measure quality improvement wherever services are offered is the survey. It has many good applications if it is well designed

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

and can provide a lot of information if it is properly analyzed.

When and why should you use surveys? Of course one of the most frequent uses is with patients

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

Examples of combination products may in

and clients. In fact, Medicare is beginning the H-CAHPS survey of hospitals to find patients’ views on many different facets of their service. The survey is vo

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

luntary and results will be posted online in 2007. It is becoming a necessity for physicians and healthcare professionals to find out what their patients think as

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

more and more information about care from insurance providers and other sources is being posted online.

The employees of any healthcare facility should be surv

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

Combination pro

eyed too. They should, after all, be considered clients. Since they provide many different services and are the front line connection to patients, their input a

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

bout their work environment and satisfaction with it are to be taken seriously. You should not just be surveying doctors and nurses, but also maintenance, admin

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

istrative, and all other groups at your site.

What are some of the basic ideas you should keep in mind when designing a survey?

1. The best questions are the an

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

hored endpoint type. One end would be “very satisfied” and the other “very dissatisfied” or something similar, with a 7 or 10 point scale from one end to the ot

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

her. The five point scale is too short. It doesn’t provide enough variance.

2. You may ask a few yes and no or gather demographic data, as age.

3. Limit yoursel

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

f to one open-ended question. They are too hard to provide statistically significant data.

4. When writing the questions, work with a team of representatives of

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

Following aspects would a

the people who will be surveyed. This helps avoid bias and makes sure you have good questions.

5. Be sure to choose a random sample to survey. It is better to

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

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

urvey 30 or 40 randomly chosen patients or clients whom you interview or have fill out a survey while in the office rather than getting more surveys by subjects

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

who return mailed surveys or volunteer in some other fashion. Voluntary surveys are basically worthless from a statistical point of view.

Once you have collec

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

ted your surveys, it is time for analysis. For simple analysis, I suggest using Microsoft’s Excel. It has some dynamite graphics. Too, you need to get the mean

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

and standard deviation of each question where appropriate. Remember, you want your mean to be as good as possible with low standard deviation. If you want some

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

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

more insight and powers of prediction of what action you should take based upon the survey, I suggest you employ someone who is trained in statistical analysis

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

or a statistician. The return on the investment of a professional analyst should easily exceed the expense.

Summarily, surveys are a valuable instrument in findi

.

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

ng out the opinions of your patients and employees. Care should be taken in designing the instrument to insure there is no bias and that there is randomness in

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

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

conducting the survey. Investment in professional analysis is well worth it. The result will be healthier patients who are more loyal, a definite financial plus

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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Yet, with today's hyper growth demands in the face of an increasingly tight market for skilled employees, it is hard to find a balance between getting in the hiring game quickly, regardless of strategy, and developing a process that will increase your chances of winning highly qualified talent.

Difficulty in spotting your target market? Don't know how to narrow your aim? Read how the pros on Madison Avenue have been doing it - successfully - for decades.

One of my first internship jobs as a college student was working for a defense company who, at the time, developed a highly sophisticated torpedo for hunting down submarines and destroying them. The operation of the torpedo was pretty fascinating. The torpedo was launched from the deck of a ship or dropped from a helicopter into the water.

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