Persistence shows you how long patients stay on treatment from the time they commence treatment to the time of discontinuation (when a patient does not fill a script for a specified number of months). It will help you determine for a given cohort, the rate of persistence of your or a selected drug/s compared to the market or competitors (i.e. at month X there is a Y% chance that a patient is still on the drug of interest). 

How can this report be used? 

Persistence could be used to:

• Determine the persistence of your drug over time and whether this has changed
• Compare the persistence of your drug to the overall market and/or competitors 
• Identify patient factors affecting persistence to treatment for the market, your drug or a competitor
• Compare or confirm your understanding of the rate of persistence based on market conditions (e.g. new listings, off patent, treatment indication or guideline changes)

How is persistence calculated?

Persistence is calculated using the Kaplan-Meier (KM) method. Using the KM method, the probability a patient is still on drug at a certain point of time can be calculated, taking into account patient data available and censoring (when there is insufficient data to determine if the patient has continued or dropped off treatment).  

Patients are regarded as ‘persistent’ until they don’t fill a script for a defined number of months (i.e. the drop-off definition).  A patient is considered to have ‘dropped-off’ treatment if they don’t fill a script between their last script and the selected drop-off definition period. Drop-off may be an indication of patients changing to another drug or stopping therapy altogether.

What does this report show you? 

You can identify the rate of persistence (i.e. the likelihood that patients are still on treatment) at a defined point in time (month) for: 

• your drug 
• a competitor drug 
• the overall market, irrespective of which drug/brand (e.g. if a patient switches drug, they are still considered persistent to the market).
• a particular class of drug 
• a particular line of treatment 
• a particular demographic – sex, age, location 
• a particular procedure or test  
• a particular diagnoses

How can you modify the chart?

Using the Breakdown by button allows you to view and explore different segments of the data by item group (selected drug) and available variables (e.g. age, sex, location, prescriber specialty).