Validating Patient Reality for Optic Neuritis
700+ patient narratives analyzed in 3 weeks. Reframed clinical assumptions for Pheno Therapeutics' fundraising and trial design.
- 700+ narratives
- ~50% residual deficit
- 3 weeks
Validating the Science with Patient Reality
What if the patient lived experience doesn't support the story you're building?
Common Synapse listens to patients, caregivers and clinicians in public online communities and turns what they share into evidence you can stand behind, for trial design, endpoints and indication choices.
The Risk
The Risk Behind The Decision
01
Decisions Under Uncertainty
As a pre-market biotech CEO, you make irreversible decisions on fundraising narratives, trial design and endpoints, often informed indirectly.
02
Indirect Information
Clinician opinion, limited studies, secondary research and internal assumptions: these are the inputs shaping your most consequential choices.
03
Expensive Misalignment
The real risk is discovering too late that patient reality doesn't support the story, when investors probe harder, trials expose gaps, or capital is already committed.
What Is It
Validating the Science Behind Your Hypothesis
Common Synapse helps you pressure-test a specific assumption about patient reality before a decision is locked in.
Common Synapse produces patient-lived evidence: real experiences that patients share in public communities. This is focused decision support: one critical question tied to one real decision. Our work builds on experience in neurology and rare disease, with a growing focus on immunology and rheumatology.
Patient-lived evidence
Real experiences patients share in public communities
Focused scope
One critical question tied to one real decision
Decision-ready output
Actionable narrative insights, scoped to one decision
When To Use It
When This Is Worth Doing
This work is most useful when there is a real short-term decision ahead. If a concrete decision is still some way off, it's often better to wait until the stakes are clearer.
Typical trigger moments
- Preparing for fundraising
- Stress-testing a disease or therapeutic narrative
- Refining trial design or endpoints
- Responding to investor or board scrutiny
- Understanding patient adoption barriers before launch or market expansion
For medical devices, diagnostics and digital health: identify hesitation, burden, stigma, workarounds and decision triggers from unsolicited patient conversations.
Explore MedTech patient intelligence →2-4
Weeks
Typical engagement
1
Question
Focused scope
18+
Years
Domain expertise
100%
Public
Sources only
How It Works
How The Work Is Shaped
Scope
One decision, one core question
Focus
Patient-lived evidence from public sources
Delivery
Typically 2 to 4 weeks
"Based on patient reality, we are more confident moving forward, or we know what needs to change."
That clarity is the outcome, with senior judgement applied at every step.
Why This
Where Other Approaches Break Down
Traditional research answers the questions you think to ask. Patients raise others on their own.
Clinician input does not equal lived experience
Generic social listening lacks context and judgment
A general AI answer restates what is already known
Common Synapse applies domain judgment directly to patient language and translates it into evidence leaders can stand behind in high-stakes conversations.
Why not just ask an AI?
AI can summarise what patients say about a disease. Turning that into a decision about your programme, with evidence you can defend in front of your board, investors and regulators, takes method and judgement. That is the work Common Synapse does.
A typical AI answer
"Poor sleep is linked to cognitive decline and a higher risk of dementia in older adults."
What Common Synapse found
"A controlled, representative sample of patient narratives, coded against the clinical question, surfaces what nobody thought to ask: patient groups outside the original brief, concerns that appear years earlier than expected, and changes that caregivers notice before patients report them."
Case Studies
Selected Engagements
Client-approved examples of the work in practice.
Mapping the Lived Reality of Progressive MS
560+ unique patient voices across 9 platforms. Translated a mechanism-led story into a patient-grounded strategic narrative.
- 628 narratives
- 560+ voices
- 9 platforms
The method in practice
How patient narratives become an auditable signal
Real patient language, coded with a controlled vocabulary, becomes the structured read behind endpoint, measure and population decisions.
Showing Competitive read. How patients judge the existing options. Treatment experiences reveal distinct cognitive trade-offs, from next-day fog to restored clarity.
How patients judge the existing options
"It works but the side effects are brutal, I dread my infusion days every single time."
Patient · public forum
"Honestly nothing has changed for me, I am not sure why I am still on it."
Patient · public forum
"The newer option feels different, I have more good days than I used to."
Patient · public forum
Coded: sentiment by treatment
controlled vocabulary, every code traceable to its source
Net cognitive sentiment by treatment, with key driver
TreatmentNet sentimentKey driver
- Agent D-53%next-day zombie / fog
- CPAP+5%fog lifted, clarity
- Agent E-38%unconscious, not sleeping
- Product A+14%clear-headed mornings
- Supplement F-20%doesn't improve quality
- Agent G-28%can't think for 2 days
- HRT+60%restored sleep + cognition
- Product C+9%quality sleep, clear AM
- Product B+14%clear next day, no habit
- Agent J-21%doesn't restore
- Agent H-63%weight gain, grogginess
- Agent I-29%sedation only
Negative sentimentPositive sentiment
Treatment experiences reveal distinct cognitive trade-offs, from next-day fog to restored clarity.
Anonymised extract from client work. Net cognitive sentiment = (positive − negative) ÷ total narratives per drug. Patient-reported sentiment, not clinical performance or prevalence.
Representative examples from real social-listening work. Verbatims are from public patient forums, reproduced exactly, with no personal information added. Figures reflect salience in patient conversation, not clinical prevalence.
About
Who You're Working With
18+ years across pharma and biotech insights, including Biogen, Novartis, and Nestlé.
Experience in regulated environments
Practical interpretation of patient narratives
A bias toward clarity and decision usefulness
Contact
Ready to Pressure-Test a Decision?
If you're a pre-market biotech CEO facing a specific decision, we can help you pressure-test the patient assumptions behind it.
Validating the science before the narrative locks in.
The decision you need to make
The assumption you want to test
When you need confidence by
Come prepared with the above for a useful first conversation.