A therapy arrives into a system that is already full
An immunology development programme needed to understand the care model its future therapy would enter in Canada.
Clinical practice and clinical guidance are not the same thing. What is written down describes the intended pathway. What happens describes the one with the capacity constraints in it.
For a therapy still in development, that gap is the more useful information. It is the part that can still be planned around.
Specialists, nurses, and everyone else in the pathway
Interviews covered specialists, nurses and multidisciplinary care stakeholders across Canada.
Nurses and multidisciplinary stakeholders were included because they hold the operational half of the picture. Capacity is rarely visible from the prescribing seat alone.
Three things were mapped: referral patterns, treatment sequencing and the capacity constraints acting on both.
Pharmaceutical market research at development stage is worth more than the same work done at launch, because at development stage the findings can still change the plan.
The care pathway as it runs, not as it is written
The work mapped referral patterns as they actually operate.
It set out treatment sequencing, which is where a new therapy either has a place or has to be given one.
And it recorded the capacity constraints acting on both, which are the factors most often left out of an uptake model.
Together those revealed the practical care delivery factors that could influence uptake of the future therapy, early enough to be designed for.
