Client Solutions
FAQs
- 1) How is your offering different from other primary market research firms and services on the market?
- For the past nine years, MedPanel has been providing primary market research to corporate and financial clients in the Healthcare and CleanTech industries. Our research solutions are built on three fundamentals: 1) a broad network of industry and policy experts, 2) an experienced research staff that understands the unique complexities of each industry, and 3) efficient, online research methods. Other research companies act as "matchmakers," merely providing expert contact information, or non-custom, cookie cutter project methods. With MedPanel, you get a fully committed and capable research partner. We'll work closely with you to identify research objectives, recruit the right experts, elicit their insights, and synthesize the results. Our domain expertise, global network of experts, and successful research methods all combine to help you save time and make better decisions.
- 2) How is your pricing structured?
- MedPanel offers flexible and aggressive pricing. We work on a subscription or ad-hoc project basis. Please contact us for more information on our pricing or to obtain a quote for a specific project.
- 3) I have used services before that rely on databases of experts. Do you go outside your database and if so, how do you select experts?
- While MedPanel has a database with more than 600,000 domestic experts in the Healthcare industry and 10,000 in the CleanTech industry, we regularly go beyond our database to find exactly the right experts for a client request or project at no additional cost. MedPanel prides itself on broad and deep industry connections to foster exactly the data our clients need to make decisions.
- 4) How long do your online panel discussions take?
- Our online panel discussions typically take between three days and two weeks depending upon the size and complexity of the project. Phone consultations can usually be arranged in one day.
- 5) Why would I wait for a panel discussion if I can just call experts on my own and ask them my exact questions?
- If that is your preference, we can rapidly arrange 1-on-1 phone consultations with hard-to-find experts to meet your specifications. That said, we feel that phone calls are not always the best approach. Our clients have found our online panel discussions to be a more compelling and efficient mechanism for capturing intelligence from multiple experts. For one, identities on our panels are always masked, encouraging unbiased answers and honest, peer-to-peer interaction between experts. Our panel discussions are also more efficient for our clients and eliminate logistical challenges, such as time zones and geography. Experts can respond when it is convenient for them and as a result, generally spend more time and provide more thoughtful answers. In addition, our multi-day discussions allow for comprehensive follow-up questioning—clients can participate as much or as little as their time and interest allows. Each panel discussion is customized to meet the specific needs of our client and includes automatic documentation for knowledge sharing, analysis, and easy reference. If you read through any number of panel discussions in our library, you can see how candid and detailed panelists are in their responses. We've been conducting panel discussions for over nine years and have found them to be an extremely efficient way to obtain high quality data.
- 6) Can I pick the questions for a panel?
- Yes. Clients can participate as much or as little as they like in any of our projects. Our research managers will typically build a question set and make recommendations, but the client can add, edit, or delete anything they choose. If the client wants to be closely involved in the feedback, they can also provide follow-up questions and present additional collateral to the panelists for further discussion.
- 7) Do I get to select the panelists/respondents or sign off on their backgrounds?
- Yes. While MedPanel will initially recommend a set of panelists based on our recruiting and domain expertise, the client always has the final signoff on the experts and their credentials, titles, and geographic locations. The client can also suggest a particular individual to add to a panel or list of survey respondents should they want a certain opinion they value.
- 8) What are my payment options?
- MedPanel accepts hard dollars or soft dollars from our clients' prime brokerage accounts.
- 9.) What is MedPanel's relationship with Merriman Curhan Ford?
- Merriman Curhan Ford is an active client of MedPanel and we work with them in the same way we work with any client—we provide primary market research that helps inform their sell side recommendations. Merriman does not have any access to or knowledge of private research we conduct for our clients.
- 10) How many clients to you have?
- Approximately 25 institutional buy-side accounts, 10 Venture Capital/Private Equity clients and 80-100 Healthcare industry clients.
- 11. Do I have to participate in panel discussions and surveys or can I just pick reports that I like?
- Library-only subscriptions are available starting at $15,000 per year, enabling clients to view, select and print all reports and leadership summits in Healthcare and CleanTech. However, it makes sense to consider that a 12-month subscription with a 3-month opt-out policy allows a client to trial the library and our custom services with a minimum investment of just $15,000.
- 12) How do I know that experts selected for my project are not overused?
- Because MedPanel often goes outside of its proprietary database to find experts for a project, the scope of our expert networks, supplemented by our pinpointed profile and criteria filtering, ensures that they are not "professional experts" and that you receive fresh insights. In addition, we screen out experts who have had numerous consultations with other clients. Our goal is to provide candid information from experts via a convenient method that ensures anonymity and in-depth peer-to-peer interaction--objectives often challenging to meet through 1:1 phone consultations alone.
- 13) What if my company requires a longer exclusivity period than 3 weeks?
- MedPanel's buy-side subscription clients generally accept a three-week exclusivity period (after which project reports are released into our research library) which allows them sufficient time to make investment decisions. However, we respect the needs of our hedge fund, venture capital and private equity clients for longer periods or full exclusivity and, in those cases, we generally work out a separate payment structure for access to the library.
- 14) In your Healthcare practice, do you only work with physicians?
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No. Our network of Healthcare experts has the most breadth in the industry and is capable of reaching virtually any relevant population for medical market intelligence, including:
- Academic clinicians and community practitioners in all therapeutic areas in the U.S. and major European countries
- 500,000 U.S.-based physicians
- Over 100,000 non-U.S.-based physicians and healthcare professionals for surveys (80,000 Europe, 14,000 Latin America)
- Nurses, pharmacists, lab directors, other allied health professionals
- Decision makers in hospitals and managed care organizations
- Over six million patients and caregivers
- 15) Is your online discussion similar to a chat room?
- Not exactly. Our online panel discussions are not "live" or "real time", but occur over a pre-determined period of days. This approach enables both participants and clients to log on to the discussion multiple times-at their convenience. This approach affords all parties, regardless of location, the opportunity for more thoughtful consideration and exploration of pertinent issues; it also allows us to work around schedules so we can recruit specialists that might not available otherwise. In addition, panelist and client identities are concealed from each other which fosters candid responses and a high level of interaction among participants. Clients are also able to view discussions as they unfold and suggest follow-up questions or identify areas for further exploration. Trained MedPanel moderators—typically specialists in the topic under examination—oversee the discussions, introduce follow-up questions, and help maintain focus.
- 16) Are you able to recruit internationally?
- Yes, we can reach just about anywhere in the world that has access to the internet
- 17) Are your surveys in English?
- Our surveys are conducted in the native language and translated into English if needed.
- 18) How do you pay your experts?
- We pay them an honorarium per engagement at a competitive rate that reflects their level of expertise and time involvement.
- 19) Can we use our own moderator for the online discussion?
- Certainly. We can assign a participant of your choice to chair the discussion but we would typically have a MedPanel moderator work alongside the chair to post the follow-up questions, clarify responses and provide support as needed.
- 20) Why did you change your name from MedPanel?
- MedPanel was founded as MedPanel, Inc. in 1999 by brothers William Febbo and Phillip Febbo, MD, who were determined to bring a different approach to gathering information from experts. Finding that live focus groups and telephone research could not deliver the best information for their clients, they developed a unique online platform that allowed for quick, unbiased, in-depth interactions between physicians and Healthcare companies. In 2005, after six years of providing research services to top biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and medical device companies, the company expanded its successful research model to institutional investment firms. In 2007, MedPanel, Inc. was acquired by Merriman Curhan Ford Corporation and launched its CleanTech practice. Renamed MedPanel, LLC, the company now provides a full range of primary market research services to corporate and financial clients in the Healthcare and CleanTech industries.
- 21. Where is your company based?
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Our company has three locations in the U.S. (see below). Our online methods allow us to address primary market research needs throughout the world.
Cambridge
MedPanel, LLC
150 Cambridgepark Dr., 7th Floor
Cambridge, MA 02140
Telephone: 617-532-5700
New York
135 East 57th Street
24th Floor
New York, NY 10022
Telephone: 646-292-1400
San Francisco
600 California Street
9th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94108
Telephone: 415-248-5600
If you don't find your question here, or our answers are not clear, please give us a call or send us an email.