Strategies to Improve Patient Engagement

In a recent video interview with Applied Clinical Trials, Yael Elish, founder, CEO, StuffThatWorks; and Julie Ross, president, CEO, Advanced Clinical, discussed results from the Barriers in Clinical Trials survey conducted by StuffThatWorks. Key challenges identified by the survey include lack of physician communication, patient education, and the complex recruitment process. Elish and Ross highlighted how the findings can be used to streamline processes and leverage patient data to improve clinical trial recruitment.

ACT: How can key stakeholders in clinical research better educate and engage their patients?

Elish: I'm sure there is, and it starts with leveling with having an ongoing conversation, ongoing education, and ongoing relationship with patients. You don't arrive out of nowhere. We're just throwing a little ad that says not much, very, very limited, and expecting people to be all over you, in participation into clinical trials. There are financial aspects. There are many opportunities to educate—not educate, I really don't like this word—but to expose, to talk about, to explain to in a way that is really leveled, patients understand. We know from StuffThatWorks, that patients are extremely educated. They know everything about their condition. They know everything about the treatments. They know in many senses, much more than the industry and the doctors gives them credit and I we're happy at StuffThatWorks to also transform their experiences into data that can arm them to become even more educated patients, but at the end of the day, the industry has to be more respectful to patients in how it approaches and how it communicates, and be more modest in expectations from patients.

Ross: I would just add that, I think we have to engage the patient with where they're at, so often we want to bring a patient into a trial, and we're trying to meet the inclusion/exclusion criteria and find the cookie cutter, but that may indeed be one of the biggest challenges with patient recruitment is we're asking them to create a whole new way of behaving to get into the clinical trial. I have to go to a different doctor. I have to behave differently. I have to, go to different places, a different place to get my blood drawn, my CT scan, my whatever it might be, we put all this burden on the patient. Then secondly, as a patient is interested in a clinical trial, do we not only ask them to behave differently, we ask their primary physician to behave differently, to say, “Yes, I support you. Go do that.” Almost like, “I can't help you with anything, therefore, go and do the trial.” Part of me says if we can solve for those two factors, how do we allow that patient to stay in their normal community while participating in the clinical trial? How they can still maintain their relationship with their primary even though they're in the clinical trial. Those are different engagement parameters that we have to solve for as we go forward, if we're going to solve for this patient recruitment challenge.