When Sales Were Materially Below Forecast: Aligning UK Oncology Projections with Real-World Data
A large UK pharmaceutical manufacturer is managing an oncology product with two indications. One indication has NICE approval; the other has received marketing authorisation but is awaiting NICE appraisal but has some restricted clinical use.
Sales are materially below forecast. UK projections are based on global assumptions around dosing frequency and duration of therapy. As the gap widens, confidence in the model comes under pressure, making it commercially urgent to understand the source of the variance.
The Challenge
Global datasets suggested longer persistence and shorter intervals between treatment cycles than believed to be occurring in practice.
Sales teams and Key Opinion Leaders reported shorter treatment duration and lower dosing, but the UK Business Insights team lacked robust, UK-specific evidence to challenge the global inputs that underpinned the forecast.
Without structured data, local insight remained anecdotal.
Verpora Approach
The Verpora team worked closely with the UK Business Insights team to explore potential drivers of the discrepancy. After testing multiple hypotheses, duration of therapy and dosing intervals were identified as the most likely contributors to the forecast variance.
The client commissioned Verpora’s Duration of Therapy report. Using commissioning data and electronic health records, Verpora conducted a detailed analysis of real-world usage across both indications, examining persistence, dosing frequency and treatment intervals.
Client Impact
The analysis demonstrated that global assumptions did not reflect UK practice.
By month seven, real-world treatment behaviour was clearly diverging from forecast assumptions. Patients were remaining on therapy for shorter periods than projected, and dosing intervals were extending beyond the cycles built into the model.
With robust UK evidence, the UK Business Insights team was able to explain the gap between forecast and actual sales and revise projections accordingly.
The analysis also identified variation between trusts, highlighting sites where persistence and dosing patterns diverged most from recommended guidance. This insight was shared with the market access team as a basis for targeted follow-up work.
“Making meaningful change to our sales forecasting model, that would be accepted throughout the organisation, required evidence for our hypothesis around dosage and persistence. Partnering with Verpora was critical to providing that evidence.”
Business Insights Lead, Top 5 Pharmaceutical Company
Key Takeaway
Healthcare systems are rarely consistent with one another. Applying global assumptions uniformly across markets can obscure significant local variation in clinical practice.
Forecast models are only as reliable as the assumptions beneath them. By grounding projections in UK-specific real-world data, the client aligned expectations with observed treatment behaviour. Correcting the immediate variance was important, but more critically, the exercise reinforced a broader principle: untested assumptions can materially distort commercial planning, particularly where local practice diverges from global norms.
