Social Media Ads for Patient Recruitment have to Compete with Christmas-Themed Competitors

For anyone using digital advertising to promote clinical trial participation – especially on social media – there’s an interesting thing happens in the last 2 to 3 months of each year, based on the fact there are more advertisers entering the market to promote items they wish to sell for Christmas.

Now, you might think that a patient recruitment advert wouldn’t be competing with ads that are trying to sell Barbies or video games.

But actually, it’s the same finite number of people in the target audience, only now with more advertisers. Which can lead to an increase in Cost Per Click and potentially a decrease in performance if your ads get lost among these additional competitors.

For example, if your ads are targeting people aged 30-40, this will be the same basic demographic for people trying to sell toys to parents.

So it may well be that an increase in your overall budget is required to achieve the same results.

Finding Suitable Trials to Participate in can be a Complex and Difficult to Understand Process

There’s an extraordinarily damning overview of the current process for finding out about clinical trials written by Dr Bess Stillman that you can read on Substack at bessstillman.substack.com.

I won’t go into the details but everyone in the industry should read the three part series entitled ‘Please be dying, but not too quickly.’

One of the issues highlighted is a familiar one – the lack of user-friendliness of the main website repository for information about clinical trials: ClinicalTrials.gov.

It is an admittedly small percentage of potential trial participants who actually seek out a trial they could take part in. But for anyone that does, the main platform that is supposed to provide relevant details is hopelessly confusing and almost impossibly difficult to use effectively.

The direction of travel is certainly toward improvement – with layperson’s summaries almost certainly set to be mandated. Let’s hope that website usability comes next, and soon.

How do we Find out if Patients Might be Motivated to Take Part in Trials?

One of the things we talked about on the recent Trialhub webinar about patient feasibility is whether potential trial participants are likely to be motivated to take part.

From inside the industry, we might believe there are legions of eligible patients out there, eager to take part in trials,, if only we could find them.

But the simple fact is, not everyone who could take part in a trial will actually want to.

There are plenty of reasons for this – and obviously we should be doing as much as we can to remove any barriers due to patient burden.

Ultimately, though, it’s a matter of choice for the individual concerned whether they wish to take part or not – something enshrined in the consent process that allows people to withdraw at any time for any reason.

So how do we find out if people might be motivated?

Asking them would probably be a good start.

In the Spirit of Research Maybe we Should Review the Idea of Putting the Clocks Back

In the UK today – Sunday 29 October – we’ve now finished with daylight saving time, so the clocks have gone back an hour. One pretty much universally appreciated effect of this is that, should we wish to, we can take an extra hour in bed. The same is true of most of Europe, who have also now gone back an hour.

Interestingly, the United States doesn’t put its clocks back until next weekend, meaning the usual 5 hour time difference between UK time and Eastern time is reduced to 4 hours for a week – with the inevitable scheduling mishaps that occur every year as a result. (Though it seems Hawaii and Arizona don’t recognize daylight saving so don’t officially alter their clocks).

I’m never quite sure whether it’s a good idea to continue this annual forwards and backwards of timezones, so I wonder if – in the spirit of research – it’s time for a trial of a different system?

I Recently Experimented with a Different Method of Setting Up and Recording a Video

This is my 117th daily video. (Actually not, though it was when I recorded it!) When I started off, all that time ago, I was concerned about making everything perfect. I wanted to have the best camera, the best microphone, the best lighting, because I wanted it to look good. But after researching that for a while I thought ‘let me just give it a go and see what happens.’

So the first one I did I just held my phone in front of me, looked into the phone, recorded the video and watched it back, and actually realized, you know this ain’t too bad. So I put it out there.

What happened after that was people started to watch them. So I’ve gradually built up this collection of 117 videos now, and people have been watching them, and Commenting on them, and Liking them and Sharing them. It’s primarily on LinkedIn, which is where my audience is. Lots of people Connect with me as well, having seen the videos, so feel free to do the same if you enjoy them.

And it’s also helped me to promote my own service, which is, of course, one of the things I want to do – my patient recruitment services. When I released my book – The Patient Recruitment Conundrum – recently, it was released on a video and people Liked it and congratulated me and went out to buy it.

So the lesson for me, I think, after 117 videos, is don’t wait for it to be perfect, just get it done.

With Halloween Approaching Here’s a Few Things I Find Scary about the Clinical Trials Industry

With Halloween coming up soon, I thought I’d reflect on some of the things I find scary about the industry.

One of them is how many sponsor organizations still expect patients to be recruited into their trials without doing anything particular to promote them.

Another is the sense that patients should somehow be grateful for the chance to participate. When in reality the gratitude should be flowing towards the patients – who are, after all, giving of their time and physiology to trial an unproven treatment – which would certainly be helpful for keeping them engaged.

Some of the processes that the research sites are forced to get to grips with are equally scary, and certainly don’t lend themselves to a smooth patient journey through a trial.

And perhaps scariest of all is the high level of patient burden that features in so many trial protocols, that is seemingly designed to ensure nobody becomes interested in taking part.

New Generation of Clinical Trials – Powered by Patient Feasibility and AI

Later on today I’ll be involved in a webinar relating to patient feasibility. You’re probably aware of the term ‘site feasibility’ and how it’s an important factor in the development of any clinical trial operations.

But you may not be so familiar with what ‘patient feasibility’ is.

I’ll be discussing the topic with Maya Zlatanova and Ilknur Lechthaler, bringing in the perspective of my experience with patient recruitment and retention.

One aspect I’m particularly interested in delving into further is how a patient feasibility assessment might be carried out, and the multiple data sources that are available for this purpose.

I’m also keen to see the sponsor perspective on how useful such an approach might be, and whether we think it can be beneficial for recruiting and retaining patients on trials.

You can watch the webinar at this URL: https://www.bigmarker.com/bioalliance-video-network/The-New-Generation-of-Clinical-Trials-Powered-by-Patient-Feasibility-and-AI

Moving Away from Embedded Relationships to Exploring Opportunities with New Vendors

When embarking on a clinical trial outsourcing process, sponsor companies will often simply engage those organizations they’ve worked with before. In particular when it comes to selecting a CRO, there is often an established relationship – such as preferred supplier status – that results in working with the same CROs time and time again.

For selecting patient recruitment vendors, sponsors will often either leave it in the hands of their CRO, or again will choose organizations they are familiar with.

And especially in the case of big pharma companies, the vendor qualification process is such that many patient recruitment vendors are wary of spending much time on a project if they aren’t already on the qualified vendor list.

I have noticed a shift in attitude recently, though, toward exploring options outside the embedded relationships – perhaps driven by the rise in the number of biotech companies – which I believe can only be a good thing for the industry.

Where Possible, Offer Patients a Choice of How they Participate in Clinical Research

Most clinical trials are still conducted through having participants attend a research site.

And there are often good reasons for this – including such things as having the necessary equipment available, and being able to ensure the integrity of the data collected.

From a patient recruitment perspective, this does somewhat limit the potential patient pool, with only people within a realistic traveling distance of a relevant site likely being interested in taking part.

There are ways to get round this issue through such methods as providing transport and accommodation options for people who might live a distance away from a site.

And, obviously, the whole concept of Decentralized Trials is based on the idea of not operating the trial solely from research sites.

What will work best for patients, of course, is being able to offer them the choice of how they participate – thus helping recruit more people in the first place.

Collaboration Among Patient Recruitment Stakeholders – Including Vendors – is Recommended

While talking with several vendors in the clinical trials space recently, I was reminded of the wealth of experience from people who work on that side of the industry – including many of whom have come from pharma or healthcare positions before crossing over to work in solutions provision.

It emphasized once again for me the value in having multiple stakeholder voices involved in the development of strategies for taking things forward in clinical research.

Specifically in the field of patient recruitment, it certainly seems like a good idea to bring in the views of people who have actually been doing this successfully as vendors, in order to have some kind of sense check as to whether the suggested route to enrolling patients is likely to work or not.

Which gives me further evidence to support the idea that working together in a collaborative way is the only real way to move forward.