Healthcare Survey Research & Pharma Insights Expert

What you'll do

You design, review and refine physician and patient survey instruments for pharmaceutical and healthcare research, turning research objectives into questionnaires that actually work.

The review brief is unusually specific about what to look at:

• Screeners, eligibility criteria, question wording, response scales, survey flow, branching and skip logic
• Leading, ambiguous, or overly technical questions
• Whether the construction suits its audience: physician, specialist, PCP or patient
• Survey length, respondent burden, ordering effects, recall requirements, and sources of measurement bias
• Whether the questions will generate reliable, interpretable, decision-useful data

You then write clear explanations and actionable recommendations. Where you are qualified, you may review both the methodology and the therapeutic-area content of an instrument; otherwise the clinical side sits with a specialist: a Therapeutic Area & Clinical Survey Expert is staffed on the same initiative.

The work is described as "an urgent research initiative", which is worth noting given no start date is published.

You do not need to be a disease-area specialist

The ad says this plainly: "candidates with exceptional depth in healthcare survey methodology are strongly encouraged to apply even if they are not therapeutic-area specialists."

The strongest profile combines methodology with clinical knowledge. But if you know how to build a rigorous physician questionnaire and could not tell a biologic from a beta blocker, you are paired with a dedicated therapeutic-area expert.

The therapeutic areas

Initial surveys cover prostate cancer, ulcerative colitis, and migraine, with more indications expected including COPD. Expertise in these is listed as highly valuable rather than required:

• Oncology, particularly prostate cancer
• Gastroenterology, particularly ulcerative colitis and IBD
• Neurology, particularly migraine and headache disorders
• Pulmonology and respiratory, particularly COPD

What you need

• Three or more years in healthcare, pharmaceutical, life-sciences, or medically focused research
• Hands-on experience developing or fielding surveys involving physicians, patients, HCPs or other healthcare stakeholders
• A strong command of questionnaire design and survey methodology
• Understanding of physician research considerations: speciality screening, patient-volume qualification, treatment behaviour, prescribing patterns, treatment pathways, clinical terminology
• Excellent written reasoning and precise methodological feedback

Nice to have

• Patient survey concepts: diagnosis history, treatment experience, symptoms, quality of life, adherence, patient journey research
• Familiarity with pharma market research, commercial insights or medical affairs research environments
• Qualtrics, Decipher/Forsta, Alchemer or SurveyMonkey: named as platforms, "helpful but not required"

Where you might be coming from

The list of acceptable backgrounds is broad: healthcare and pharmaceutical market research, healthcare consumer insights, pharmaceutical primary market research, survey methodology, quantitative healthcare research, patient or physician research, behavioural science, healthcare consulting, medical communications, life-sciences insights and analytics, and patient experience or patient insights.

The titles named, worth scanning if you are unsure whether you count: Healthcare Market Research Manager or Director, Pharmaceutical Market Researcher, Primary Market Research Manager, Consumer or Patient Insights Manager, Healthcare Insights Consultant, Survey Researcher or Methodologist, Quantitative Researcher, Research Director, Healthcare Research Consultant, Behavioural Scientist, Patient Insights Lead, HCP Insights Lead, Commercial Insights Manager or Director, and Medical Insights Researcher.

Behavioural science on that list is notable: it is not an obvious route into pharmaceutical survey work, and it is named twice.

What it pays

$140/hour, flat: a single rate rather than a band, with no task-based or output-based qualification anywhere in the ad. It is an hourly rate for hours worked.

You are engaged as an independent contractor; tax is not withheld, and local registration and reporting are on you. See our FAQ on tax handling.

What is not stated

• No hours commitment. Fully remote and "on your own schedule", with no weekly minimum or maximum
• No project dates, despite the work being described as urgent, though projects can be extended, shortened, or concluded early
• No vetting process. No steps are described
• No location requirement, so eligibility is left open
• The AI research organisation is not named

Worth knowing

Good:

• $140/hour flat, a single number rather than a range, for hours worked
• Therapeutic-area knowledge is explicitly optional, rare for healthcare research work
• A broad list of acceptable backgrounds and titles, so it is easy to tell whether you qualify
• No degree requirement and no named employer
• Fully remote on your own schedule, with no stated weekly commitment
• The work is stated not to require confidential information from your employer
• Multiple therapeutic areas and "additional indications expected over time" suggests more than a one-off

Less good:

• Described as urgent, but with no dates, no hours and no duration you can plan around
• No vetting process described, so you cannot judge the time cost of applying
• Projects can be "concluded early depending on needs and performance"
• Independent contractor: no benefits, no notice period, your own tax and any local registration
• The client and the AI research organisation are both unnamed

About this listing

Posted by Mercor, confirmed open on 7 September 2026. The $140/hour rate, the backgrounds and titles listed, the qualifications, the named platforms and the therapeutic areas are its own published text for this listing.

No location requirement, no weekly hours and no project dates are stated, so those fields are left open rather than inferred. The AI research organisation and the end client are not named. Eligibility and payment run at the platform level. See Mercor and who can actually do this work.