Externally conducted and performed Focus Group studies have been performed in USA, 5 European countries and in India. The results show an immediate appreciation of the DirectHaler™ Pulmonary device.

• “It is unique, and easy-to-use. No margin of error for dosage.”
• “It would be easy-to-use, portable, lightweight, and I can’t imagine anything easier to use”

Confirmed acceptability in USA
A US study performed by Essex Marketing, which assessed the opinions of pulmonologists and respiratory-focused GPs in in-depth interviews, gave a flavour of the sort of feedback we were getting. It concluded:

“The DirectHaler has a strong possibility of success in this market. All the physicians rated the product as a four or five on a five-point scale of likeliness to prescribe. It was thought to be an appropriate device for virtually any inhaled products that could be put into an appropriate powder form. This device was seen as having considerable advantages over competitive devices because of its simplicity and ease of use.”

A postscript to Essex’s conclusion read:
”Physicians were very enthusiastic about the DirectHaler. There were very few negative comments. In the many years that we at Essex Marketing have been testing new medical products, we have seldom seen such an enthusiastic reception for a new product.”

Confirmed acceptability in Europe
The Italian marketing research consultants, PiTRE Pharma, surveyed 300 GPs and 150 pneumologists in Italy, France and Spain. When asked how they rated monodose devices compared with multi-dose devices in terms of hygiene, dose security, size and discreetness, availability of the right number of doses, how simple they are to use and how easy they are to carry, GPs and pneumologists overwhelmingly preferred the monodose inhaler concept.

In every category, more than 50% gave scores of six or seven on the seven-point scale where a score of one indicated an opinion that multi-dose devices were much better and seven indicated that monodose inhalers were considered much better. The responses from pneumologists revealed generally similar trends in opinion.

PiTRE’s results comparing monodose and multi-dose showed unequivocally in favour of monodose in the categories of size and discreetness, simple to use and easy to carry.

Confirmed acceptability in India
An Indian feasibility study of DirectHaler™, which involved 25 pulmonologists and chest physicians, 15 paediatricians, and 45 consulting physicians, confirmed these opinions. The participants were asked to express the benefits of DirectHaler™ over existing devices in various categories as a score between 1 and 5 where one was “very poor” and five was “very good”. No doctor gave DirectHaler™ a score below four with reference to its ease of use, ease of instruction, portability and its overall potential in patient compliance.

Hygienic performance is perceived high value
The issue of inhaler hygiene is becoming increasingly important as more information about the cleanliness of multidose devices emerges. For example, evidence that multidose devices are as contaminated after five uses as they are after fifty has shown that they require cleaning. 

DirectHaler™, because it is a single-use disposable inhaler, eliminates such problems because it is discarded after use. Hygiene is perceived by physicians to be one of its valuable benefits. Indeed, in the PiTRE Pharma study, approximately two thirds of GPs and an even greater proportion of pneumonologists gave scores of seven – the most emphatic response in favour of monodose that was possible in the survey – to the question asking them to compare the two types of inhaler with respect to hygiene.

DirectHaler’s originality captures GPs attention
The fact that DirectHaler™’s design, appearance, feel and mode of operation are all novel and original and therefore different to other inhalers was highlighted as a valuable attribute in our studies. For example, in the PiTRE study, more than half of GPs in France and Spain, and 91% of those in Italy, said that the DirectHaler™ Pulmonary device was either “quite interesting” or “very interesting”. When asked about its originality, more than 94% of GPs described it as “quite different” or “very different” and the majority of these indicated the latter.

This uniqueness gives sales representatives something out of the ordinary to capture attention – a very welcome tool in a market searching desperately for innovative concepts that give a competitive edge.