• Over 60% of pharmaceutical launches fail to meet pre-launch forecasts, with most unable to recover once early uptake expectations are missed
• Market access and reimbursement complexity is the leading driver of launch underperformance, outweighing promotional execution or clinical differentiation
• Misalignment across internal teams and external stakeholders (payers, physicians, patients) consistently erodes early momentum and sustained uptake
• Incomplete understanding of the real-world patient journey leads to hidden barriers that traditional research methods fail to surface
• Weak or unclear value narratives leave even best-in-class products undifferentiated in crowded or competitive markets
• Post-COVID launch environments demand more agile, insight-driven, and omnichannel execution models than most organizations are currently equipped to deliver

Summary
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Despite strong clinical assets, many pharmaceutical and life science launches underperform due to commercial execution gaps rather than scientific limitations. The most common drivers include misaligned market access strategies, fragmented stakeholder decision-making, and insufficient visibility into real-world patient behavior.

This report examines the systemic root causes of launch underperformance across therapy areas and regions, highlighting where traditional planning approaches fail to anticipate common barriers. Drawing on aggregated patient-level insights and launch diagnostics, it outlines how organizations can identify risk signals earlier, align cross-functional teams, and course-correct faster post-launch.

The findings demonstrate how real-time patient intelligence can materially improve launch readiness, reduce commercial risk, and support more resilient market performance.

What You'll Learn
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• The five primary commercial failure points that consistently undermine pharmaceutical launches, with cross-therapy examples
• How early market access decisions create long-term constraints on uptake, reimbursement, and persistence and how to pressure-test these assumptions earlier
• Where patient journey blind spots most often occur and how they translate into missed revenue opportunities
• Why differentiation frequently breaks down at the point of care, even for clinically superior assets and how to sharpen positioning using real-world insight
• What high-performing commercial organizations do differently, including how they monitor launch health and adapt execution in real time
• How continuous patient intelligence and launch diagnostics from mama health enable earlier risk detection, faster iteration, and improved commercial outcomes