Free Writing can be a Valuable Technique for Producing Ideas

I’ve mentioned before that I sometimes like to use a ‘no filter’ brainstorm approach for coming up with ideas.

And I think this technique is particularly useful when combined with ‘free writing’ – where you simply jot down everything that comes into your head without editing it.

I’ve recently been completing my next book on patient recruitment and writing without editing is not something that I’ve found all that easy.

But since I’ve started with the free writing approach for generating ideas – occasionally adopting this as the first thing I do in the morning – it’s enabled me to see the value it can deliver.

Perhaps surprisingly, writing things down also helps to clarify my own thinking. If I simply note down everything that occurs to me – however seemingly unimportant or tangential to the topic – I can then go through it in a creative manner and make connections that might previously not have occurred to me.

People Rarely Perceive or Describe Themselves as Simply Being Patients

Dean Martin famously described himself as a drunk, rather than an alcoholic. One of his reasons being that drunks don’t have to go to meetings. Whether he actually was as fond of a drink as his persona implies, what I’m getting at here is how we perceive or describe ourselves.

The people we’re trying to recruit to take part in clinical trials are extremely unlikely to only consider themselves in relation to their condition – which is unfortunately what can sometimes happen when clinical researchers are describing patients.

I have two chronic conditions myself, but it’s rare for me to think of myself only in terms of being a patient requiring ongoing treatment.

And I’d be surprised if the same isn’t true for anyone else we might define as a patient. People are human beings first, with all the experiences, thoughts and emotions that go along with that, with any condition being only a small element of the whole.

Good Marketing can Help Improve the Public’s View of the Clinical Trials Industry

People can often view marketing as being a bad thing – designed to persuade people to do things they don’t really want to, in order for the company behind the marketing to make a profit.

But actually, good marketing is about highlighting the features and benefits of something in such a way that it encourages people to find out more for themselves.

When we look at marketing in the context of recruiting patients for clinical trials, I think a lot of people in the industry see it as simply a necessary evil that they’d really rather not have anything to do with.

And yet, when done well, patient recruitment marketing can both fulfill its primary purpose – attracting volunteers to participate in a trial. And also help increase awareness about clinical research in general – thus helping to raise the reputation of the industry in the minds of the public. Which I would suggest can only be beneficial.

Scientific Research & Clinical Trials Chapter from The AI Revolution in Medicine: GPT-4 and Beyond

One of the chapters in the book, The AI Revolution in Medicine: GPT-4 and Beyond, relates to the possible applications for AI within the field of scientific discovery and clinical trials. Some of the possibilities covered include that once live internet access is fully integrated with GPT-4, it should be able to identify live trials a patient may qualify for.

There are already AI systems available for performing chart reviews to assess a patient’s suitability for a trial, and these are only likely to improve and become more efficient.

Reviewing current trial data is another area that can be speeded up, as well as looking at the results of previous trials when preparing to design a new one.

And from the perspective of the patient experience, GPT-4 can translate the trial jargon so it’s easier to understand, as well as answer questions as they occur at any stage of participating.

A Look at the Excellent Book – The AI Revolution in Medicine: GPT-4 and Beyond

I recently read the book, The AI Revolution in Medicine: GPT-4 and Beyond, by Peter Lee, Carey Goldberg, and Isaac Kohane – which has a fairly self-explanatory title regarding what it’s about.

The topics covered include having primary care practitioners use AI to help identify an illness from a patient’s symptoms, plus provide relevant potential treatments. Also how GPT-4 should be able to help reduce the burden of paperwork in the healthcare profession. For example, by speeding up the process of writing doctor visit reports.

It also looks at how useful GPT-4 could be for translating medical jargon into layperson’s language – or even into a language that isn’t English, which would certainly be a benefit for a lot of patients.

There’s also a strong focus on having GPT-4’s outputs verified by a human throughout the process to avoid potential errors, plus a section related to clinical trials which I’ll look at in the next vid.

Improving the Product Itself can be the Most Effective Form of Marketing

The essence of marketing is to try and bring out the most attractive elements of a product or service in order to promote it to people who might be interested.

To that end, a cafe might make its window display look attractive, or play music that people might enjoy while there. And one of the key things they might do is to dress up the contents of what they’re offering with a fancy sounding menu and attractive descriptions of the food.

But in reality, on a hot day, nothing a cafe can do to attract customers will work better than if they put up a sign saying ‘free ice cream’.

And that’s fundamentally one of the issues we have with clinical trials. Making the ‘product’ itself more attractive – namely through reducing the burden of taking part – would be the single most effective thing we could do to attract more participants.

People don’t Always Realize that the Origin of Clinical Trials lies in the Natural World

Many of us will have seen claims on the internet that ‘big pharma’ is preventing the use of natural treatments by forcing the medical profession to buy their expensive drugs rather than prescribe herbal remedies and such like.

While the online world is notoriously more aggressive than the ‘real world’, this view is often reflected among people at large.

Interestingly, the very first clinical trial is considered to be that carried out by James Lind to try and treat the effects of scurvy in sailors. It was based on using what Lind had available to him – namely types of food – and concluded that oranges and lemons gave the best results.

I think what many people don’t realise is that the whole clinical trials industry was founded on using natural ingredients, then developed into discovering what it is about those ingredients that is the active element, in order to reproduce it on a mass scale.

One of the Potential Benefits of Trial Participation is an Ongoing ‘Well Person’ Health Check

While we’re not allowed to coerce people into taking part in trials, there are things we can highlight that should help encourage interest, at least. The fact the participant is ‘doing good’ is certainly one of these things. Plus some trials will cover expenses or even arrange for transport and accommodation.

One of the things I think participating in a trial provides that is often undersold is the level of basic health check care that people will receive.

The potential new treatment is being investigated for its efficacy in relation to a specific condition. Such that while someone is in a trial, multiple other general health checks are regularly provided to ensure the accuracy of the results.

In effect, what you’re getting when on trial is the equivalent of a ‘well person’ health check on a regular basis – provided as a matter of course, rather than having to pay for it.

A Friendly, Personal Approach can Help Retain People on Clinical Trials

One of the things that I’ve seen help encourage participants to stay on a trial is the friendliness, respect, and helpfulness of the people they deal with.

Not much of a revelation here, of course, but perhaps we do sometimes forget that we’re working in a people industry, not just a medical one. And what people want is to be treated like a person, not just as a representative of the particular condition or conditions they may be living with.

Which means that everyone who has a ‘people-facing’ role – including frontline staff at research sites, nurses, study co-ordinators, principal investigators, receptionists etc. – should ensure they behave toward the trial participants as they would wish people to behave toward themself.

If you’re not friendly to a customer in a shop, they will likely go elsewhere. If you’re not friendly to a trial participant, they will likely drop out of the trial.

2 Months of Daily Short Vids about Patient Recruitment for Clinical Trials

It’s now two months since I started recording and posting daily short vids with my thoughts on patient recruitment and retention. They’ve resulted in my having some very interesting discussions with other people within the industry. And seem to be going down reasonably well with most people who see them – which is quite gratifying, as I hadn’t anticipated quite how much of a commitment it was going to be when I set out doing them 62 days ago.

I think the two key things I’ve learned from the process are – firstly that forcing myself to consider how I’m going to express an idea clearly and concisely is a great way to clarify my own thinking.

And secondly, that trying to mix and match shirts and ties without repeating the same combination over the course of 60 plus videos is actually a bit more fun than I would have expected it to be.