Pharmaceutical Lead Generation With NIH Resources
The National Institute of Health (NIH) provides a number of publicly available resources online that lists contact information for researchers and investigators in the life sciences market. These databases contain relevant information including the researcher involved (i.e. “principal investigator”), the organization he or she belongs to, and information on the project or study. For individuals in the life sciences and pharmaceutical marketing industry, these resources can provide a way to directly contact the researchers involved for lead generation.
Generating pharmaceutical sales leads starts with the contact. Investigators in the life sciences market are involved in a variety of different research areas, therefore, the ability to more carefully target your lead generation activity is important for gathering interest.
NIH RePORTER
One of the most useful tools publicly available is the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH) Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tool (RePORTER). Generating life science sales leads through this platform is as easy as searching for a general research areas. For instance, searching “alzheimers” produces a list of publicly funded grants, the award amount, the researcher, and the organization he or she is affiliated with.
As of 2020, the RePORTER database entails +$40 billion worth of funding across more than 70,000 active research projects. To get information on the specific researcher, simply click on the “Contact Pi” link, and follow through to obtain his or her email.
The number of different ways you can narrow down projects is vast and includes specific filters related to the project, location, timeline for funding, etc. You can also search the content included in the project abstract for specific terms to generate even more targeted leads in the life science market.
An export feature above the results allows you to copy out the table in a more convenient format, and a series of tabs allows you find publications, patents, etc. related to the project results.
The RePORTER database also provides a method to browse projects by geographical location. To help understand the life science research market in a specific region, this tool is helpful for narrowing down the results and filtering for a region of interest.
Overall, NIH RePORTER is a useful resource for determining who has funding and how it will be used. The information contained in the database can be helpful when performing life science analytics and identifying organizations in the research market.
NCBI PubMed
Another useful tool for life science research marketers is to search through publications. The U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) maintains the PubMed database which catalogs publications from across the globe from over 30,000 journals.
As researchers publish their findings, information is included in the citation such as all authors involved, their affiliations, and grants used to fund the study. Oftentimes, a corresponding author will be listed along with an email for any communication or questions regarding the article. Simply expand the Affiliations section, and look for an email listed.
To more easily gather these emails, see our Search PubMed tool to quickly generate life science lead lists. Enter a search term, and Search PubMed will allow you to download all articles with corresponding authors listed.
PubMed allows marketers to dive deeper into an investigator’s research and general field of study. Reading through their publications provides access to information such as their current field of study, materials and methods used, and who their collaborators are. This information provides essential information when mapping potential pharmaceutical leads.
To further understand a specific field of research, browse through several publications on the topic, and look for common references throughout. Oftentimes, these seminal publications point to some of the leaders and influences in the field of research and may help to quickly map out the individuals involved in the field of study.
ClinicalTrials.gov
Finally, another potentially useful resource is to look at specific on-going clinical trials. The U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) maintains ClinicalTrials.gov which lists all trials and their study information. Simply search a research area, and a list of current studies will display.
By clicking on any given clinical trial, researchers can find information such as an overall description of the study, design, eligibility, location information, and contacts for the study. Oftentimes, an email will also be included in this section.
Gathering this information can also help generate more targeted lead lists for the life science market - especially for pharmaceutical lead generation. For publicly traded companies, this information is often available on their own websites by referencing an NCT Number. To find a list of all clinical trials related to a specific pharmaceutical company, simply search the name of the organization, and a list of on-going and completed clinical trials will show.
By combing through various NIH resources online, sales and marketing professionals can quickly generate lead lists in the pharmaceutical and life sciences industries. After searching through several online databases, marketers can quickly discover which researchers are funded, what projects they are currently involved in, and how to contact them.