Five Ways to Optimize E-Recruitment


By Joseph C. Avellone

March 10, 2003 | Early misguided approaches to recruiting patients over the Web for clinical trials have given way to effective — and replicable — methods for using this technology. However, many trial teams lack sufficient knowledge about how and when to apply e-recruitment. The following guide will help.


Determine if the Internet makes sense for your protocol.
Online recruitment works best for clinical conditions that are chronic, affect quality of life, and are treated primarily in the ambulatory setting. Examples include diabetes, depression, anxiety, arthritis, select cardiovascular and neuromuscular diseases, and some types of cancer. It's particularly useful for conditions with an element of social stigma (e.g., overactive bladder), as people feel more comfortable exploring their health options in a user-controlled manner.


2 Develop e-recruitment plans during the prelaunch phase.
Industry surveys show that principal investigators won't meet their patient quota 80 percent of the time. Online campaigns with screening Web sites work best over a long period. Given the real-time data generated, early implementation lets trial teams and their advisors evaluate initial results and make midcourse corrections when necessary. Early deployment also saves time and work educating clinical sites, integrating other recruitment activities, and obtaining requisite review board approvals.


3 Build your enrollment campaign from the ground up.
Pick the most efficient recruiting tools first, determine their likely yield in the context of your budget, and then add tools as needed. For example, a diabetes-patient recruitment strategy might begin with placing brochures in the investigator offices, then incorporating a campaign Web site, and including a radio campaign to attract additional patients if necessary.


4 Use screening Web sites as an adjunct to media campaigns.
Campaign Web sites are a very cost-effective adjunct to traditional media campaigns. Because they're user-controlled, have memorable site addresses, and maintain anonymity, they can dramatically leverage traditional media. Typically, a campaign site will increase referrals by 10 percent to 50 percent.


5 Deploy multitrial screening Web sites and databases.
More than 90 percent of patients screened for a specific protocol through a traditional or an online recruitment campaign won't make the cut. However, screening these "failures" against other trials creates large efficiencies. With as few as three other protocols in the relevant area, a screen failure can be matched to another trial more than half the time. A multitrial screening Web site with a proprietary patient database and call center/trial site connections can save millions of dollars annually. Such e-recruitment systems can be built, hosted, and maintained by outside vendors, resolving regulatory concerns about in-house patient data and organizational limitations of multiple study teams.

Joseph C. Avellone, M.D., is CEO of Veritas Medicine in Cambridge, Mass. He may be reached at avellone@veritasmedicine.com.

Back to E-Recruitment: Trial by Wire








White Papers & Special Reports

sgi whp 2
Managing the Modern Genomics Data Flood
Sponsored by SGI

Managing and storing the perfect storm of multi-disciplined data pouring from next generation sequencers and other omics instruments is a central challenge in life sciences. Discover in this paper how the SGI ArcFiniti storage solution, optimized for unstructured genomics and life sciences data can: 

  • Reduce costs, proactively protect data integrity, and deliver the high performance I/O required for genomics data processing and analysis.  
  • Effectively manage capacities from 156TB to 1.4PB as a disk based, integrated hardware and software platform 


sgi - whp 1
Turning Genomics Data into Practical Insight
Sponsored by SGI

With worldwide sequencing capacity approaching 13 quadrillion DNA bases annually turning genomics data into knowledge is a true computational challenge. Read this paper and learn how the SGI UV coherent shared memory platform can:  

  • Speed results time while cost competitively tackling the most difficult computational problems across all omics disciplines. 
  • Push performance by scaling to extraordinary levels, up to 256 sockets (2,560 cores, 4,096 threads) per single system (one OS image). 

Provide support for up to 16TB of coherent shared memory in a single system image enabling extreme efficiency across a wide range of compute demands. 



accerlys-logo_2012_wh
New Complimentary Market Survey…
Collaborations and Communications Within Drug Discovery Research
Sponsored by Accelrys
This survey was conducted by the Cambridge Healthtech Media Group in January, 2012. It was sponsored by Accelrys related to their HEOS initiative to gather valid information around externalizing collaborative research while improving communications in the cloud. With 310 qualified industry respondents the survey findings reveal useful usage and trends patterns.  An insightful follow-on discussion and webinar related to this survey, and the HEOS by Scynexis SaaS portal is also available on the Bio-IT World website for complementary viewing.
 


Job Openings

tessella logo 
Scientific Software Engineer
Boston MA
$70,000 to $95,000
 
Apply at http://jobs.tessella.com   

oxford nanopore logo 


Early Access Collaborations ManagersClick here to find out more and apply   

Oxford Nanopore's GridION technology, VP, Sales and Marketing Click to  Apply  

For reprints and/or copyright permission, please contact  Tim McLucas, (781) 972-1342, tmclucas@healthtech.com .