Press Release Source: Decision Resources On Monday November 15, 2010, 8:00 am EST

BURLINGTON, Mass., Nov. 15, 2010 /PRNewswire/ — Decision Resources, one of the world’s leading research and advisory firms for pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that although four out of five surveyed psoriasis patients in the United States who have requested a brand indicate that physicians are willing to comply with their request to be prescribed a specific drug, only 20 percent of surveyed patients indicate that they have asked for a psoriasis drug by name. Given the fact that moderate-to-severe psoriasis patients are underserved by currently available treatment options, this finding suggests that marketers of psoriasis therapies could improve the uptake of their therapies by increasing patient awareness of their drugs through physicians, web sites and patient advocacy groups.

Additionally, surveyed patients with both mild and moderate-to-severe psoriasis at the time of diagnosis were more likely to be diagnosed during their first doctor’s visit if they were examined by a dermatologist versus being seen by a primary care physician (PCP). Eighty-five percent of surveyed patients with mild psoriasis and 78 percent of patients with moderate-to-severe psoriasis who were first seen by a dermatologist about their symptoms were diagnosed with psoriasis during their initial examination. however, only between 55 and 60 percent of patients with mild or moderate-to-severe psoriasis were diagnosed with psoriasis during their first examination by a PCP.

The findings are from Decision Resources’ new Patient Forum report entitled Underserved Moderate-to-Severe Psoriasis Patients Offer Opportunity for recently Launched and Emerging Agents. With Patient Forum, users can obtain indispensible primary market research on U.S. patient attitudes and perceptions of both their disease and treatment, with a specific focus on how patient segments within the psoriasis population differ from each other in their behavior and disease characteristics.

“Patient acceptance is critically important to the success of a drug brand and by understanding the perspectives, behaviors and attitudes of patients, drug developers can obtain the information they need to effectively market their existing and emerging products,” said Decision Resources Program Manager Jennifer Moniz-Carpenter, M.B.A. “Patient Forum provides primary market research on the patient journey to diagnosis and treatment, how patients perceive their disease and treatment, what drives patient opinion about current treatments and what will prompt patients to request an emerging therapy.”

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