Advancing Clinical Trial Recruitment: Social Media, Health 2.0 and the e-Patient

One of the biggest barriers in the development of new drugs and medical treatments continues to be the challenges associated with the recruitment of clinical study participants. Would you invest in a company that was late 90% of the time in its product delivery? This is the case in the clinical trial space today. In my opinion it is a broken industry that is almost always late and the overruns cost an average of $800,000 to $5,400,000 a day.

Is it any wonder the pharmaceutical industry as a whole is at its lowest point ever in terms of Shareholder ROI?
What can we do to improve the most critical piece of this industry the pipeline?

“About 2% of the United States population gets involved with clinical research trials each year. Among people who suffer from severe, chronic illnesses, only 6% participate. As a result, an increasing number of clinical trials are delayed because too few people...even knew they had the opportunity to get involved.”
Source: Getz, The Gift of Participation

“An overwhelming majority of people (77%), say that they would consider participating in an appropriate clinical study if asked. However, only 10% of those eligible to participate in clinical trials do so in the U.S.” Source: CISCRP, Harris Interactive

In a recent poll, 94% of people recognize the importance of participating in clinical research in order to assist in the advancement of medical science. Yet 75% of the general public state that they have little to no knowledge about the clinical research enterprise and the participation process.
Source: CISCRP, CenterWatch

A 2007 survey determined that 91% of study volunteers interviewed would participate in a clinical trial again, and 85% said they would recommend a family member or friend volunteer in a study.
Source: CenterWatch

Well when you look at the research that has been done on this and there is a ton, some critical points jump clearly out. I have identified four of them above. What seems clear is that people just don’t know about clinical trials, what they are, how they can do them and where do they find them.

Combining the realistic challenges facing the drug development sector with the growing dialogue online about e-patients and the tools and networks now available to connect and inform the patients, we can combine our knowledge of the clinical trial process with our social media savvy in helping sponsors identify and connect with potential clinical study participants. The same technology platforms used to identify and help recruit participants could also be adapted to help sponsors select locations for the investigative sites or to engage with physicians -- potential new clinical investigators.

We know that patients are increasingly turning online for health information. We also know that patients are not informed about ongoing studies and so potential candidates are squandered due to lack of communication.

Insights and Approach

Social media tactics work very well alone or as part of a marketing mix. When combined with traditional methods the mix increases touch points and aids retention of study name and details. Digital tools scale well to an existing recruitment plan (involving traditional media outreach, advocacy relations, advertising, physician literature, etc.).

What can you do in the social media space for your trial?

• Digital audit of the space to determine the competitive landscape for other studies and community building efforts in the therapeutic category.
• Mapping audit of the disease category to indentify parameters and qualify the existing disease state conversations and potential trial candidates.
• Monitoring of signals and communications within the community so messages and responses can be tailored in real time. Reporting can be done regularly to inform results and the iterative process.
• Development of an awareness platform to mobilize the community and inform them about the specifics of the disease state and to pre-screen members on inclusion/exclusion; also for PI’s to direct potential participants for pre-screening
• Measurement and reporting, to quantify the existing space in terms of the size and engagement of the members. The initial benchmark serves to highlight the progress made in developing the community and funneling potential candidates. A final benchmark highlights the increase in recognition and awareness among the target population.

Clinical Trial Recruitment in Colon Cancer

We took the example here of colon cancer to show how this works. In the graph below you can see we were able to identify 33,487 people who are discussing colon cancer. This is a highly interested target population to let know about your trial. It includes potential candidates as well as motivated ambassadors who would like nothing better than to find a cure, and while waiting on that effective molecules to facilitate living with the disease. We can also tell where they are discussing this disease and know on what platforms we should message them.

In looking at the conversation cloud we can identify topics of interest to them. We can see that the conversation is about constipation and cleansing or healthy foods and better diets. Knowing what the colon cancer population is talking about helps us to talk to them. Who would run into a party and start shouting out topics of interest? This is why it’s important to take the time up front to listen to your audience, and learn from them.

When we look at the trending conversation we can see when topics of interest hit the community. For example in the case of colon cancer we know that on March 17th 2010, a spike was caused by the release of “the colonoscopy song” on March 17 2010 by Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary fame. The video was released in partnership with CBS to deliver a serious message to viewers about the importance of colon screening. KevinMD.com gives a good write up on this here.

Colon Cancer Space

I. Breakdown by Media Type: This tells us where the conversation around colon cancer is currently taking place.

• Blogs, 66%
• Twitter (MicroMedia), 23%
• Mainstream Online News 2.6%
• Forums and Forum Replies, 5.3%
• Facebook, 1.5%
• Comments, 1%
• Videos, 0.5%
• Images, >0.1%

II. Conversation Cloud: This gives us a snapshot of the keywords in that conversation and possible messages.




















Topic Trending: This is a more in-depth look at some of the important topics in the conversation. There was one significant peak in conversation of the 33,489 posts.