A pharma market research conference

What a pharma market research conference is

A pharma market research conference is a working meeting for the people who study customers, patients, prescribers, and markets in the pharmaceutical industry, and for the people who have to act on that work. It is not a general medical congress. It is not a trade show about manufacturing equipment. The subject is evidence: how it is gathered, how it is read, and how it changes a decision.

The decisions are familiar to anyone who has sat in a brand review. Which patients is this product really for. What does a physician believe about the current standard of care. Where does a message fail. What will a payer accept. What does a forecast assume that the research does not support. A useful meeting stays on those questions for two days, with the people who own them.

Primary research is the part most people picture first. Interviews, surveys, ethnography, and message tests. Secondary work sits beside it: claims data, promotional audits, publication review, and the public record of a competitor’s trial. A pharma market research conference that only covers questionnaires is already too narrow. The job has spread into analytics, forecasting, and the argument about what the evidence means for a launch or a portfolio.

EPIC, the Executive Pharma Insights Conference, is a pharma market research conference in that sense. It is an independent meeting. It is two days, January 27–28, 2027, at the Hanover Marriott Hotel in Whippany, New Jersey. The room is for leaders in pharma, biotech, med device, and diagnostics. Named advisors are on the advisory board.

Who the meeting is for

The title on a badge is less important than the work. The people who get value from a pharma market research conference are the ones who are accountable for evidence inside a company, or who supply that evidence to a company. Who should attend spells that out.

On the company side, that is market research and insights. It is also analytics, forecasting, and decision science. It is competitive intelligence and commercial strategy. It is market access and new product planning. A head of insights who never speaks to forecasting will leave with half the argument. A forecaster who never sits with the research team will defend a number nobody trusts.

Agencies, fieldwork firms, and data vendors are in the room too. Their registration price is different because they also come to meet the people who buy the work. Sessions still come first. The meeting is aimed at people who set the questions, choose the method, and defend the result to commercial, medical, or market access leadership.

The industries are specific. Pharma, biotech, med device, and diagnostics. A meeting that drifts into a general health audience stops being useful to this room.

More than market research

Market research is the name people search. It is not the whole job anymore, and a meeting that pretends it is will feel dated by the first afternoon.

Insights is the wider function. It includes the study, and also the translation: what a brand team can do on Monday because of what the study found. A slide that is interesting and a slide that changes a message are not the same object. A good share of the argument at a modern pharma market research conference is about that gap. Research that is remembered, believed, and acted on is a different standard from research that was fielded on time.

Analytics sits next to the study. Commercial analytics, real-world data, and the long argument about which source is allowed to contradict a survey. Forecasting sits on the other side. A forecast is a set of beliefs about the market. Research is one of the ways those beliefs get tested. When the two functions do not share a room, the company runs two versions of the truth. Sessions at EPIC include how commercial teams decide what to believe when the forecast and the research disagree, and which early market indicators actually move a number.

Competitive intelligence is the third neighbor. It is not a separate hobby. It is what the company knows about everyone else’s product, trial, message, and price, in time to matter. A launch plan that ignores it is a launch plan written in a closed room. The program includes the war room work of pharma insights teams, and the question of what “good” looks like before a product is in the market.

Commercial strategy, market access, and business development are why the evidence exists. A segmentation that looks clean in a report and falls apart when a representative meets a physician is a commercial problem, not a methods footnote. A licensing conversation that never asks what the insights team knows about the asset is a business-development problem. Partnering and portfolio choices are part of the same meeting, because the people who own the evidence are now asked to support those choices, not only the brand plan.

That is the point of EPIC. It is a pharma market research conference, and it is more than market research. The people in the room work across insights, analytics, forecasting, competitive intelligence, and commercial strategy. The agenda is built for that overlap, not for a single method.

The work the sessions are about

If you are deciding whether a pharma market research conference is worth two days, read the session titles before you read the hotel. The titles tell you whether the meeting is about your job.

Launch research is one center of gravity. What brand leaders need from insights before a launch. How the research playbook changes for a new generation of products. How a portfolio that did not exist five years ago changes the questions. Those are operating problems. They are not a tour of trend words.

Segmentation is another. A segment that tests well and then fails in the field is one of the most expensive mistakes in this work. The program takes that failure seriously: why a pharma segment dies on contact with the real world, and what does not change when a team tries to redraw the map. Hidden patient segments, and the practical problem of finding them, belong in the same conversation.

Customer and patient evidence is a third thread. Patient journeys. The moments between decisions, where what a patient or a physician actually does is not what the discussion guide expected. The future of the customer journey, as a research problem rather than a slogan. Message work sits here too: what makes an insight stick, in the plain sense that a team remembers it, believes it, and uses it.

The function itself is on the program, not only the studies. Why a chief commercial officer calls an outside firm instead of the insights team, and what to do about that. How to prove the value of an insights or analytics group. How to build a commercial analytics function from nothing. How to build an insights function for a category that does not exist yet. How generics teams use insights when the product is not a new molecule with a long runway. Those sessions are for people who run the department, not only for people who run a single tracker.

Artificial intelligence is on the agenda because it is already in the work. The opening keynote takes up market research and insights in that setting. Later sessions ask whether a synthetic respondent can stand in for a customer, where a human still has to sit in the decision, and how a forecast stays under the team’s control. One session asks whether a market researcher is still needed. That question belongs here. It is not the whole meeting. More data is not the same thing as a better decision, and that problem has a session of its own.

The full list, with times, is on the agenda. A few slots are still open. The shape of the two days is already clear: research, the functions around it, and the decisions those functions are supposed to change.

What to look for when you choose one

Not every event that uses these words is the same meeting. A sequence of vendor demonstrations is a sales meeting. Physicians teaching physicians is a medical meeting. A pharma market research conference is a room where insights, analytics, and commercial leaders compare how they work. Suppliers belong there. They should not be the only voices.

Scale is the other test. A hall of several thousand people can show you the whole industry. It is a poor place to argue about a segmentation or a forecast. EPIC is the smaller kind: a senior room, two days, one subject. Research with no forecasting, no competitive intelligence, and no market access is an old map of the job. The useful meeting holds the study and the decision in the same afternoon.

The two days, the place, and the price

EPIC is January 27 and 28, 2027. Both days are at the Hanover Marriott Hotel in Whippany, New Jersey. Sessions, the exhibition, and the hotel rooms are in one building. You do not change venues between a session and a conversation in the hall.

A preferred group rate of $249 per night is available through January 15, 2027, subject to availability. The room is booked separately from the conference. Registration does not include the hotel. The details and the booking link are on the hotel page.

Conference registration has an early-bird rate through December 4, 2026. It is $995 for pharma attendees. It is $4,795 for agency, vendor, or service-provider attendees. That is the current rate. The registration page is where the rate, what it includes, and the form all live.

What you are buying is two days in that room. The program, the conversations between sessions, and the people who do this work. If you need the timetable before you decide, read the agenda. If you already know the room is the right one, register.

If you want to speak or sponsor

Attending is the main door. Two others exist.

If you have a session that belongs in this room, apply to speak. The standard is the same as the rest of the program. A session should help someone who runs research, insights, analytics, forecasting, or competitive intelligence do the job better. A product tour will not.

If your company wants a place in the exhibition and a structured way to meet attendees, see sponsorship. Packages are described there. The meeting stays a conference first.

For a question that is not covered on those pages, the contact page is the direct line. More writing from the conference is on the insights page. The short version is the button below.

Register for EPIC