Lab Test Results, Claims Data, and Patient Records Should be Good for Patient Recruitment

Another method of recruiting patients into clinical trials that should be valuable is to use such things as a patient’s health records, lab test results, and insurance claims data.

Obviously there are privacy issues that come into play for each of these, but if that aspect can be covered effectively, tapping into the information available would be a very effective means of locating potential trial participants through comparing their data against a trial’s eligibility criteria.

Here in the UK we have the NHS – which you might think would be a useful source of health records data that could be used for sourcing patients.

Unfortunately, however, the data held by the NHS is not centralized or digitized, so it’s of limited practical value for our purpose.

Once again, then, the approach of utilizing patients’ health data is one that should work well for trial recruitment, but falls short of being as good a solution as it could be.

A SWOT Analysis is a Useful Business Tool and a Potential Source of New Ideas

A SWOT analysis is a technique often used by businesses to identify and assess different aspects of their operations.

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats, and an honest appraisal of different elements within a business can be useful for helping consolidate the good things and eliminating or improving the bad.

Another thing I find a SWOT analysis can be good for is to generate ideas.

Identifying strengths can help provide thoughts for other activities of a similar nature that may be beneficial.

Weaknesses can help uncover ideas for how to fix them or highlight other areas that might need to be looked at..

Opportunities can encourage you to explore other avenues and alliances.

Threats can provide the basis for reimagining how you go about things that negates any effect they may have.

So, as well as being a useful exercise in general, performing a SWOT analysis can be good for coming up with ideas.

Writers are Often Either Planners or Pantsers – or a Hybrid of Both

Within the world of writing advice there’s often a clear distinction made between planners and pantsers. Referring respectively to people who plan out what they’re going to write before putting the words together, and people who write ‘by the seat of their pants’ and see where the flow will take them.

These descriptions are usually given to people who write fiction, but can equally apply to people writing non-fiction – or, as in the case of my latest book, people who write a hybrid of the two.

I had started off with a plan for how to describe the various stakeholders in the patient recruitment process, and outlining ideas for making improvements.

Then when I came up with the title – The Patient Recruitment Conundrum – it reminded me of a thriller story, so I rewrote everything in the style of a novel, combining elements of planning with elements of pantsing, which worked well for what I wanted to do.

Digital Outreach is Another of the Best Methods for Recruiting Patients

Having mentioned doctor referrals, site databases, patient group and community outreach activities as ideally being the best methods of recruiting patients, we now come to the approach that is adopted by the majority of vendors in the space – digital outreach.

If the other methods worked better, this would be an additional process that could be undertaken to help recruit a few extra patients.

What actually happens on the ground, though, is that this method often becomes the primary source of trial participants.

I know there are lots of grumblings by research sites about the poor quality of central ad campaigns. But when done well, digital outreach is a highly effective means of encouraging people to participate in trials.

And as I’ve said before, social media in particular is fertile ground for recruitment campaigns – one reason being the social nature of the platforms means people will share relevant information with people they know.

Communities of Patients Should Provide a Good Source of Trial Participants

Continuing the theme of the best methods of recruiting patients for clinical trials, reaching out to patients ‘where they are’ is another approach that should be able to deliver good results.

Many patients will be involved with a patient group focused on their specific condition, as well as potentially being part of an overall patient database – for example, one that covers multiple diseases in the same therapy area.

And we should always remember that patients are people first, so community outreach based on non-health related factors is another avenue worth exploring.

Unfortunately, many patient groups are naturally wary of organizations that want to tap in to their database of contacts in order to promote the idea of trial participation. And promoting trials in communities is often hit and miss, so – as with the doctor referrals and site databases – these methods generally don’t currently deliver as many patients into trials as they should.

Research Site Databases Should be able to Work Better for Recruiting Patients

Having looked at what I consider to be the ideal method for recruiting patients – doctor referrals – I’ll share a few other thoughts on the best methods of recruiting patients as things are today.

It should be the case that research sites – especially those that are established in their area – will have sufficient numbers of relevant patients on their database to be able to recruit their target number of trial participants.

One of the things that stops this from happening effectively at most sites is the lack of resource allocated to finding patients.

And I’m not solely blaming the sites for this – it’s obviously difficult enough to make ends meet with the supposedly fair market value they’re being paid to administer trials.

But, as with the doctor referrals, if this aspect could be improved significantly – including, of course, the process of selecting the right sites – every trial should be able to fill its quota of participants every time.

Referrals from Primary Care Physicians Should be the Best Source of Trial Participants

I’m often asked what’s the best method to use for recruiting patients into clinical trials. And the answer is usually prefaced with ‘it depends’ as each trial will have its own circumstances that need to be addressed.

But if we look at the concept of patient recruitment as a whole, I would say that the best way to recruit patients would be for their primary care physician to share the relevant information with them. Their doctor almost certainly being viewed as a trusted advisor with whom the patient is likely to have something of a relationship.

In reality, this rarely happens, with doctors having little awareness of potential trials their patients could participate in, too little time to research or share the information etc..

Maybe this is a little ‘turkeys voting for Christmas’, but if we could get that aspect right there would be no need for the billion dollar a year patient recruitment industry to exist.

Why I Take an Old School Approach When it Comes to Measuring Advertising Success

I view advertising in what might be thought of as an ‘old school’ manner. In that I believe the fundamental point of all advertising is to ‘sell stuff.’

In the world of patient recruitment the stuff being sold is obviously that of participating in a clinical trial.

Which is why I keep coming back to the legendary figures in the advertising world, such as Claude C Hopkins, John Caples, David Ogilvy and the like.

Hopkins in particular – with his mantra of Scientific Advertising – was a pioneer in testing what works and what doesn’t, basing his strategies on mail order coded coupons that can be identified when they are sent in as to which ad they relate to.

Thus being able to determine which ad is more successful at ‘selling stuff.’

In today’s world of digital advertising we can track things in an even more sophisticated manner, enabling us to utilize these principles to successfully recruit patients for trials.

Why I Revisit A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens Every Year

Continuing the Christmas theme, I ensure I do something related to Charles Dickens’ story A Christmas Carol every year. That includes usually reading the story, as well as watching various adaptations on TV, or going to the theater for one of the many annual productions. (This year I’ll be seeing Christopher Eccleston as Scrooge at The Old Vic).

Interestingly, Dickens wrote other Christmas stories following the 1843 publication of A Christmas Carol – presumably feeling he’d hit on a successful strategy with the first one – with The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth, and The Haunted Man all having similar plot elements to the original story.

One of the reasons I like reading the story each year is to try and learn from it for my own writing. And I figure that studying an author and story that have had such success and longevity is probably a decent place to start.

Incorporating a Christmas Element in Your Content

Every year there’s a consideration to be made when creating content as to whether to include reference to Christmas, or even to create some specific pieces for the festive season.

Television programs will have wrapped their Christmas specials many months ago, and any Christmas songs being released will have been recorded much earlier in the year.

There’s a great story about the writing of The Christmas Song which was actually inspired during a hot summer in 1945, with the lyricist Bob Wells wanting to conjure up images that might cool him down so he jotted down ‘Chestnuts roasting, Jack frost nipping, Yuletide carols etc.’

As I’ve said before, I think looking to much talked about events for content inspiration is certainly a good idea, and throughout much of the world, Christmas is one of those events that it makes sense to incorporate in your content strategy – even if it’s just something silly like wearing a Santa hat.