SCOPE Summit 2025: The Importance of Language in Patient Engagement

ACT: How can effective localization strategies help sponsors address patient recruitment and retention challenges in global studies, potentially accelerating the overall trial timeline?

Norman: I think as you are engaging with these patients, it's really important to make sure your content is available in their target language. We know particularly for minoritized communities within countries, they are much more trusting and they are much more open to communication when it is in their language, particularly if you're dealing with older generations that maybe came to a particular country and maybe don't have a high proficiency in English or whatever the main language of that country might be, so making sure that you are accounting for potentially diasporic populations or additional languages that you might need in your study, is a way of ensuring that if you are looking for maybe a rare disease population, and you identify a patient that is a good fit for your trial, that you're then not held up by localization timelines or the lack of a language which you actually need to communicate with that patient.

ACT: How can sponsors ensure their localization efforts keep pace with diverse regulatory requirements while still accelerating launch timelines?

Norman: I think being aware of what’s needed in all the different countries that you're aiming to go into is really important because it allows us to prepare for the success of that trial. That's why I always advocate for a scale down approach, so starting with everything that you could possibly want for your scoping, so you can talk to your providers and get all the information that you need, what's available, what needs to be developed, and then making strategic decisions from there. Do you just not have the time to include a particular country or particular language, or is it the case of you really want to include that community, and therefore you're going to get started on that localization earlier in the process. Being aware of what's needed by the different regulatory bodies in the different countries allows us to plan from the very beginning and make sure that we're delivering what's needed without causing impacts to your go live dates, whatever it might be for your particular trial.