When Diabeloop, a company based in France, needed to better understand the end-to-end experiences, needs, and challenges  of people living with type 2 diabetes in the United States, they partnered with Thrivable to conduct a series of online surveys that allowed them to gather essential input from the U.S. patient community regarding a potential product — efficiently and cost-effectively.

Personalizing Diabetes Patient Research

Dedicated to relieving the mental burden diabetes patients face daily in managing their care, Diabeloop is a leading innovator in the application of therapeutic artificial intelligence to automate and, most importantly, personalize the treatment of insulin-dependent diabetes. The company’s strong commitment to personalization extends to its approach to gathering patient insights to inform product development.

While it’s a given for any company to study the market it serves, we want to address the differences that exist in patient needs, lifestyle, and expectation because Diabeloop’s system has been designed to adapt to the individual characteristics of each patient.

— Stephanie Jegu, Head of Brand and Communications

Market Research Objective

Diabeloop’s product for type 1 diabetes is already available in five countries in Europe, and the medtech company is now exploring market opportunities within the United States, specifically, to meet the needs of patients diagnosed with insulin-dependent diabetes. To accomplish this, Diabeloop partnered with Thrivable on a pilot market research program that involved a series of online surveys designed to uncover the end-to-end experiences of people with diabetes and engage them as early as possible in the product development process.

Adopting an Iterative Approach to Market Research

The pilot program allowed Diabeloop to conduct market research both efficiently and cost-effectively by leveraging Thrivable’s rapid research platform, including on-demand access to an engaged diabetes patient panel and self-service survey tools. The result is that Diabeloop has gathered market research insights in days (as opposed to the months often required with traditional health care market research programs) while arriving at the personalized insights the team sought.

Many of us who work at Diabeloop, myself included, live with type 1 diabetes, or have a close family member that does. Our goal was to challenge our assumptions on what aspects of automated insulin delivery are most important to people with type 2 diabetes and where their needs vary from the type 1 diabetes population.

From the very beginning, we designed the pilot program to produce insights on the entire patient experience, from where they go for information and their affordability concerns to the support they need once a treatment program is in place. And, as much as you want to identify common themes among a target population, the write-in responses are vital to understanding what each individual needs to be fully supported in his or her care. Thrivable made it easy for us to arrive at this depth of understanding.

— Rachelle Bye
Project Leader, Diabeloop

Among the factors in Diabeloop’s pilot program success is the ability to target diabetes patients with a high level of precision through Thrivable. This includes filtering to connect directly with patients who were either currently using or had previously used a CGM system, as well as the ability to reach out to type 1 patients versus type 2 patients. Nearly all surveys were launched with completed responses available for review within two days (one was even completed in less than 24 hours).

“The platform is intuitive, which makes it simple for anyone, whether they’re technical or not, to design, program, launch, and analyze surveys. The visualization of responses as they came in allowed us to quickly assess the breakouts of responses, especially for questions with multiple responses,” notes Rachelle.

Laying the Groundwork to Inform Product Development on a Continual Basis

With a strong Thrivable partnership in place, Diabeloop plans to conduct additional U.S. patient research on a continuous basis as the company moves forward with its type 2 product development efforts, making small changes along the way in response to patient insights and feedback — a far more agile approach than when research is restricted to either at the initial outset or right before a product is scheduled for release.

Diabeloop also plans to use Thrivable to gather feedback on U.S. commercialization and distribution options for its automated insulin delivery system for type 1 diabetes, the primary focus of the company since its founding in 2015.

“The result is that Thrivable is helping us identify what’s important to patients,” comments Zoe Heineman, senior vice president for North America. “It’s an invaluable tool for any organization that wants to understand what matters most to their target market because of the quality of the patient panel and the reliability of the platform.”