The Digital Evolution of Patient Recruitment

Tell us a little bit about yourself and 1nHealth.

I’m kind of a cross between a life science veteran and an e-commerce veteran. I created 1nHealth based on those philosophies to answer the question, “how do you use compelling marketing to incite individuals to take action?” At 1nHealth, we are putting an advertising catalyst in front of individuals in hopes of getting them to enroll in clinical trials. 

Early last year, the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning to impact sponsors' ability to run clinical trials. What kinds of choices did you see them making?

For the first stage, sponsors’ and CROs initial decision was to wait. The evening the NBA cancelled the season was kind of the stark flag in the sand that this year was going to be very different. After that, sponsors and CROs had to adapt and create a more robust strategy to recruit participants, thinking beyond the standard playbook of bringing participants into sites.

We saw sponsors choose to go the virtual route. Did we start to see that in the patient recruitment space as well? How are patient recruitment vendors adapting to this shift to more decentralized trials?

You can take the same protocol and apply a digital lense to it to get the same results. Overall, what we have seen is instead of looking at sites as the bread and butter for patient recruitment, we are seeing studies and RFPs come to us with digital as the central point to recruitment with sites as the adjunct for recruitment. 

How was 1nHealth able to effectively reach people throughout the pandemic? 

What every digital recruitment firm is going to do is put ads in front of people and hope they take some action. Here at 1nHealth, we believe that marketing around clinical trials is about starting a conversation. We are able to reach folks for clinical trials because they are what is outside the “norm” for clinical trial recruitment. Second, we are using creative content that belongs on their newsfeed or search bar. 

The clinical research industry has been accused of being slow to adopt AI compared to other industries. For sponsors who have found themselves turning to digital solutions in response to COVID, what advice would you give them? How should they adjust their patient recruitment strategies?

The status quo does need some shaking up. In many cases sponsors are used to sticking to what is required of the participants. We want to get sponsors to think about what is going to get people to read more - it has to be about the patient when we think about what patient centricity online looks like. We want to create content that is native to the environment and gets them to take the next step. 

What do you think the state of patient recruitment will be after COVID-19? Do you think it will be predominantly digital or will site-based trials come back?

I think it’s going to be somewhere in the middle. COVID forced us to stay in our houses for a while, and as that lifts we’ll see the requirement for sites to be part of studies still remains. I think there is a seismic shift that is happening in the push for decentralized trials. With all of that in mind, digital will become more central to trials as some trials cannot function without sites. 

Are there any final thoughts you would like to share with our audience?

I just want to reinforce how we have an industry that is so sophisticated and technical. We need to remember that these are people who are scrolling through their feed and come across a trial ad. Sponsors need to work to throw out sterile advertising copy because the way we talk to them is what compels them to move forward in the study.