
Market access has evolved into a multidisciplinary strategy and is no longer confined to traditional pricing and reimbursement. It ensures rapid and sustained availability of therapies to the right patients at the right price.(1) As market access continues to evolve and become more dynamic with rising healthcare costs and growing stakeholder diversity, pharmaceutical companies need to look beyond conventional tools. Sentiment analysis (SA), a branch of social media listening (SML) that uses natural language processing (NLP) to classify texts based on opinion-based or emotional content, offers a compelling solution. SA enables early detection of mindset shifts in perception of treatments by mining real-time data from digital platforms.(2,3)
SA or opinion mining works by classifying text to detect the contextual polarity of the written content as positive, neutral, or negative.(2) Apart from social media which contributes most data for SA, data is also extracted from other sources such as news articles, blogs, forums, or even clinical documents.(3) In pharmaceutical industry, SA provides early insights into how treatments or disease areas are perceived by patients, clinicians and policymakers. It captures real time emotions, doubts and hidden support which are crucial to anticipate product uptake and shaping market access decisions.(4)
SA has various applications in early market access planning. It can enable competitive intelligence by analysing stakeholder sentiment around drug launches of competitive interventions, revealing enthusiasm or scepticism. It can help in stakeholder mapping by identifying early adopters, digital key opinion leaders (KOLs), and patient advocates, by reading their online presence. It can also detect pricing and reimbursement cues through reactions from patients and payers through policy pushback, public outrage, or unexpected support. Additionally, SA can gauge regulatory and HTA sentiment by analysing tone in consultations, policy drafts, or legislative debates, providing early advantage in navigating access challenges.(1,2)
SA is already extensively utilized in the real-world setting in the healthcare industry. For instance, online scepticism delayed biosimilar uptake in parts of Europe despite having a regulatory approval. Feedback was captured through clinician commentary and forums.(2) SA has also been used to detect adverse drug reactions, offering earlier risk signals which may not be captured through official surveillance systems.(5,6) SA can add geographic sensitivity revealing how messaging can be pivoted or economic models can be adjusted across countries or subpopulations. This supports early stakeholder engagement in launch planning.(4)
Despite the promising scope, SA has a few limitations including bias in source data due to overrepresentation of digitally active users, giving skewed insights.(2) Also, sentiment does not always reflect the behaviour or intent, requiring triangulation with other research methods. Ethically, SA needs to responsibly use public content ensuring transparency and privacy.(2)
In conclusion, SA provides insight into real-world perceptions that influence access outcomes and can be used to transform market access strategies. By understanding early signs of resistance or unmet needs, SA can enable planning and better alignment with key stakeholders. In an increasingly digital healthcare environment, market access teams should embrace SA as a strategic monitoring tool to strengthen early-phase decision-making to ensure long term success.
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References:
- Kumar A, Juluru K, Thimmaraju PK, Reddy J, Patil A. Pharmaceutical market access in emerging markets: concepts, components, and future. J Mark Access Health Policy. 2014 Dec 1;2.
- Sharma C, Whittle S, Haghighi PD, Burstein F, Keen H. Sentiment analysis of social media posts on pharmacotherapy: A scoping review. Pharmacol Res Perspect. 2020 Oct;8(5):e00640.
- Devika MD, Sunitha C, Ganesha A. Sentiment analysis: A comparative study on different approaches. Procedia Computer Science 2016;87:44–49.
- Sorayaie Azar A, Babaei Rikan S, Naemi A, Bagherzadeh Mohasefi J, Wiil UK. Predicting patients’ sentiments about medications using artificial intelligence techniques. Sci Rep. 2024 Dec 30;14(1):31928.
- Tricco AC, Zarin W, Lillie E, Jeblee S, Warren R, Khan PA, Robson R, Pham B, Hirst G, Straus SE. Utility of social media and crowd-intelligence data for pharmacovigilance: a scoping review. BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2018 Jun 14;18(1):38.
- Coloma PM, Becker B, Sturkenboom MC, van Mulligen EM, Kors JA. Evaluating Social Media Networks in Medicines Safety Surveillance: Two Case Studies. Drug Saf. 2015 Oct;38(10):921-30.


















The USFDA defines real-world data (RWD) as ‘the data relating to patient health status and/or the healthcare delivery that is routinely collected from a variety of sources’, and real-world evidence (RWE) as ‘the clinical evidence regarding the usage and potential risks/benefits of a medical product obtained from analysis of RWD.’[1] RWD includes data from electronic health records (EHRs), administrative and medical claim databases, pharmacy data; data from product, patient, and disease registries, patient-generated data (including in-home use settings, social media data, patient forums, etc), and data gathered from other sources that can inform on health status.[1]