Social Media Mining in Drug Development Decision Making: Prioritizing Multiple Sclerosis Patients’ Unmet Medical Needs

Abstract

Pharmaceutical companies increasingly must consider patients’ needs in drug development. Since patients’ needs are often difficult to measure, especially in rare diseases, information in drug development decision-making is limited. In the proposed study, we employ the opportunity algorithm to identify and prioritize unmet medical needs of multiple sclerosis patients shared in social media posts. Using topic modeling and sentiment analysis features of the opportunity algorithm are generated. The result implies that sensory problems, pain, mental health problems, fatigue and sleep disturbances represent the highest unmet medical needs of the samples population. The present study suggests a promising potential of this method to provide relevant insights into rare disease populations to promote patient-centered drug development.