Activity

When creating a forecast, the first thing that you need to do is decide on the frequency of the forecast, this could be dictated by data or by a particular business need. However, the ability to be able to phase a long-term, strategic forecast that may need to be created annually and span several years into a short-term operational forecast that…[Read more]

When sizing the market within Onco+ there are 4 different input options to choose from; incidence, incidence/relapse, incidence/relapse calculate and progressed patients. These have all been designed to make sure that you have all the options necessary to accurately size your market (which is very important in an incidence based, patient flow…[Read more]

If you have created several different forecasts, perhaps for different scenarios, indications or if you are pulling together forecasts for different countries, it is important to be able to consolidate these forecasts to be able to view the aggregated outputs and also to compare and contrast. The consolidation features within Flow+ help you to…[Read more]

When creating a forecast, there may be presented with the need to increase (or decrease) your market. This could be due to a couple of reasons:

1)     A change at the total market level (e.g. new diagnostic tools)

2)     A specific product event (e.g. a new product that enables previously untreated patients to be effectively treated)

If the inc…[Read more]

It is quite often the case that forecasters are having to consider how to best structure their forecast so that they have the granularity of creating forecasts for different sub regions and/or commercial channels.

Sales+ can help you to tackle this challenge with relative ease. The first consideration is the level of detail/ complexity that you…[Read more]

Sharing forecasts should be quick and simple. Although the forecasts you build using Onco+ require some very specific algorithms that will only be available to those who have the addin installed on their computer, there are a number of different ways you can share your forecast:

1)      If the colleagues you are sharing with have either a full…[Read more]

With any patient flow model, each section is intrinsically linked to the section that follows. As a result, if you simply delete rows within your forecasting model, using the standard Excel delete feature, then your model will most likely break. For example, if you delete your events section, then the subsequent therapy duration section will no…[Read more]

New functionality that we have introduced into Epi+ recently is the ability to split your total patients into new, switched from another treatment, stable on their current treatment or who have dropped out of treatment (either drop outs or switch outs). Having the ability to split these patients gives you the ability to easily explore these…[Read more]

Different markets require different forecasting approaches. When looking at a forecast from a sales based approach, there are 2 different ways to size your market. You can either opt for a top down or a bottom up approach.

A top down approach is much more suited to a stable market where the changes are more likely to be at a market level as…[Read more]

The Onco+ conversion ­pop up menu contains several different selection options, one of these being the option to include a loading dose as part of your conversion process. This is an important consideration when converting to revenue, as the number of units may differ within the loading period which in turn will affect the calculation of your…[Read more]

Patient opportunity groups are often an important consideration in forecasting and management teams need to understand the detail surrounding the dynamics of patient treatment activity.

In a Flow+ model, you have the ability to identify new to treatment patients (naïve), switch patients and even the stable and drop out patients. Here’s ho…[Read more]

More often than not, management teams like to explore different potential potential scenarios as a means of finalising the forecast. For relatively simple scenarios that focus on, say launch dates adjustments or peak share estimates, then using the events section within Epi+ means you can create different scenarios with ease. In the example below,…[Read more]

In a sales based forecast, your historical data is a vital input to help create that initial, baseline forecast. But how much historical data is sufficient? Too much data can make your model quite heavy and potentially quite slow to run. Too little and the risk is that the trended values are inaccurate. And similarly, can we use all the historic…[Read more]

A regimen-based approach to forecasting in Oncology is common place. But when it comes to converting to revenues, does it make more sense to keep your forecast at the regimen level or consider splitting out these regimens into their respective products (and then converting the specific products of interest)?

Using Onco+ you have the option of…[Read more]

Products are really the centrepiece of your forecast so it stands to reason that the way the products are handled needs to be as accurate as possible. But how do you best deal with products that have launched within the last 12 months or so? There are 2 ways to do this:

1)     Within your baseline forecast in the trending section

2)     Within…[Read more]

Trending a market is always going to be one of the key fundamental steps when creating a forecast. Therefore, it is vital that the trend is, at the very least, well thought through – so, what is the best way to approach your trending section within Epi+?

When creating the trending section within your forecast using Epi+ you will be presented with…[Read more]

We have built Sales+ to be as flexible and engaging as possible – we have also included the ability for it to be as efficient as possible. We often see clients create a forecast structure for, say a particular market and then need to replicate the same forecast structure for several other markets in a particular region.

Of course, if there is t…[Read more]

With a patient flow model, it is important to go back sufficiently far enough so that the ‘flow’ element of your forecast has time to fully kick in by the time that the forecast period starts. For example, if you start the forecast in Jan 2019 and patients are staying on treatment for an average of 3 years, then those patients in Jan 2019 will not…[Read more]

Patient flow is a great forecasting methodology where it is important to be able to ‘follow’ patients through the treatment pathway. However, it is very easy to get mathematically dumbfounded by the sheer volume and complexity of the calculations that sit behind such a model. But Flow+ makes this challenge much easier – and incorporating produ…[Read more]

As you may have heard us say many times at J+D previously, a good forecast is like a good story – each chapter has a clear beginning and end and it is obvious how each chapter links together. But a good story is nothing without the synopsis/ blurb – and that is where your forecast schematic can play a valuable role in supporting your wider for…[Read more]