Developing a new healthcare product is too expensive and high stakes to rely on gut instinct alone.
From early concept ideas to pricing and packaging, you need evidence that patients, providers, and payers will understand, value, and actually use what you bring to market.
That is the role of healthcare product development research.
In this post, we outline the core types of research projects that support decisions from concept through launch, based on what we see working with healthcare and medical device brands.
Healthcare market research is different from other industries because of the complexity and sensitivity involved in bringing new products to market.
Unlike a consumer app or household product, healthcare offerings directly impact patient well-being and must navigate strict regulations before they can be launched.
Every decision carries higher stakes, and not backing those decisions with data can be costly for both patients and the practice or business.
In our work with healthcare and medical device teams, three factors tend to stand out.
A single product may need to resonate with several audiences at the same time. For example:
Each group brings different priorities. Without structured research, it is very difficult to understand these perspectives in a comparable way or to know which trade-offs matter most.
Product development research provides that structure so teams can see where needs overlap and where they diverge.
Bringing a new healthcare product to market often requires years of R&D, regulatory work, and commercialization effort.
Some estimates place the total time to bring a new medical device from concept to market at three to seven years when you factor in development, testing, and approvals.
When the time horizon and investment are this large, small mistakes in the early phases can have outsized consequences later.
Market research introduces checkpoints along the journey, so you are not waiting until launch to discover that:
Recommended Reading: Measuring Appeal and Demand for New Healthcare Product
Many healthcare topics are personal and sensitive. Patients may hesitate to share honest feedback about symptoms, health behaviors, or treatment preferences unless they trust the process and understand how their data will be used.
An experienced healthcare market research partner, we design methodologies that prioritize confidentiality, clear consent language, and thoughtful question design.
This type of environment encourages openness and leads to more accurate insights you can rely on for product decisions.
Even when teams understand the value of research, a few common challenges tend to surface.
Patients, providers, and payers (health plans, benefit decision-makers, or hospital finance leaders) rarely want the exact same thing.
Patients might care most about convenience and side effects, while providers are focused on evidence and integration, and payers are focused on long-term cost and outcomes.
In our experience, one of the most difficult parts of product development is prioritizing these needs without alienating any group. But, structured research makes this easier by quantifying trade-offs.
For example, you may learn that providers will accept a slightly higher cost if documentation is automated, or that patients will accept a longer treatment time if recovery is faster.
Healthcare product development is resource-intensive. There is pressure to move quickly, yet missteps are expensive.
When research is treated as a “nice to have,” it is often skipped or minimized early on, only to be requested later when a launch falls short or adoption is slower than expected.
We often recommend building research into the roadmap from the beginning. Smaller, focused studies at key points in development can prevent much larger issues later.
A short concept test early on can save months of work on a product that the market does not understand or need.
Recommended Reading: The Importance of Ongoing Research Through Product Development
Because of the sensitivity of healthcare, participants may worry about how their feedback could affect their care, job, or relationships with manufacturers or vendors. Without clear framing, they may default to what feels “safe” or socially acceptable, rather than what is true.
Experienced researchers address this by:
The result is more honest feedback that better reflects real behaviors and attitudes.
The right approach to healthcare product development research goes beyond simply collecting data.
It targets the right audiences, asks the right questions, and gathers enough feedback to support confident decisions at every stage.
The most sophisticated questionnaire will not help if the sample is off. The first step is making sure feedback comes from the people who will actually use, prescribe, recommend, or pay for the product.
In practice, this might mean:
When we scope healthcare product studies, we often recommend including at least two of these audiences, sometimes in separate phases.
This gives a more complete picture and prevents one group’s voice from dominating the roadmap. Defining these audiences early ensures that insights are directly tied to your business and product goals.
Well-designed research focuses on clarity and relevance to your goals. Questions should be specific enough to drive decisions, but open enough to uncover feedback you were not expecting.
For example, instead of only asking: “How satisfied would you be with this product?”
You might also ask:
These kinds of questions reveal both quantitative measures (ratings, rankings, purchase intent) and qualitative context that explains the “why” behind the numbers.
In our experience, the most impactful product development studies blend a hybrid of both insights.
One of the biggest mistakes we see is relying on very small samples because it feels faster or easier. Limited feedback can lead to false confidence and costly missteps later.
The “right” sample size depends on:
As a general rule, it is better to have a solid, focused study with enough completes in your primary segments than a long survey spread too thin across many subgroups.
A healthcare product development research company, like Drive Research can recommend appropriate sample sizes and methodologies for your specific objectives.
Healthcare product development research often takes shape through a few core project types. Each serves a different role in reducing risk and guiding decisions from early ideas through launch.
Concept testing evaluates early product ideas before significant resources are invested.
The goal is to understand how key audiences react to a new idea, whether they understand it, and how it compares to their current solutions.
In a typical healthcare concept test, we might:
For example, our team tested a new seizure-relief product concept with neurologists who treat epilepsy across the U.S., U.K., Germany, and France.
The survey measured appeal, clarity, and replacement potential versus current options, so the client could see where the concept fit, which messages resonated, and how often doctors might prescribe it.
Read the full story here: How to Test a New Healthcare Product Concept with Doctors
Pricing research explores how much customers are willing to pay, how different pricing models are perceived, and which price ranges feel fair in the context of alternatives.
In healthcare, we often see questions like:
Methods like van Westendorp pricing, conjoint analysis, or discrete choice modeling can simulate real-world trade-offs between price and features.
Pricing research can also benchmark against competitor offerings to see where your product can sit in the market while still meeting revenue targets.
The outcome is not just “a number,” but a strategy: recommended price ranges, preferred models by audience, and talking points for your commercial team.
Even in healthcare, packaging plays a critical role in perception and adoption. Package testing helps brands understand whether:
For patient-facing products, confusing packaging or dense instructions can reduce adherence. Whereas, for provider tools, unclear onboarding materials can slow integration.
If you are planning a new product, updating an existing solution, or preparing for a major launch, a dedicated research partner can help you move from assumptions to evidence.
Our team at Drive Research are experts at running custom studies for concept testing, pricing, packaging, and more, then translate the data into clear recommendations your team can act on.
Have a product in mind? Contact us to scope your healthcare product development study.
