MediciGlobal

Pfizer must be applauded for its efforts to further raise public awareness for clinical trials through an internet application.

Over the past 20 years, many web-based patient recruitment projects and programs for clinical trials have come and gone. It would be nice to see this one actually succeed and change the course of history.

Patient recruitment initiatives of past have had a bumpy ride. In each case, the venture was company-driven rather than Sponsor-led. So this latest patient recruitment initiative by may result in a different outcome.

Consider that over a decade ago, the Harris Poll was a pioneer in this field; the company matched patients to clinical trials from their database, generated through a search engine called “excite”. While over 4 million patients spanning 47 therapeutic categories opted in through Harris Poll’s daily polling question, the initiative did not succeed. There were many reasons including the fact that the specificity of a clinical trial’s inclusion-exclusion criteria weeds out many patients. Additionally, more patients were excluded because they were not located near a study site. The model did not warrant long term success.

Another company, Veritas Medicine an internet-based patient recruitment firm also entered the online patient recruitment space. Like Harris Poll, it based its business model on building online databases of patients, and matching them to clinical trials. In 2007 however, this company-driven database closed it doors.

Companies driving online initiatives that involve building patient databases for clinical trials have so far shown limited success. A more recent initiative came earlier this year, when in January 2009, Acurian Inc. announced, the release of an internet application aimed at Facebook and MySpace. The company wanted to generate “clinical trial awareness and patient recruitment.” It projected that with Facebook and MySpace having nearly 200 million registered users; it could tap into these online audiences and have them sign up for access to clinical trials. The company even sought to entice people with earning points that would correspond with a donation to one of twenty medical causes. On August 12, 2009, just 8 months after launch, Facebook lists 34 fans, and 97 active users.

With a lack luster history of companies driving patients into databases online, could it be that patients are generally mistrustful when a company is involved? Are patients reticent to leave contact or personal information in the hands of businesses? Do online databases have more success when they are backed by patient groups and disease associations? Just some of the many questions we ask ourselves as patient recruitment specialists, always seeking to harness the power of the web.

Finally, in the examples described above, it is again important to emphasize that each initiative was company-driven not sponsor-led. A major pharmaceutical company stepping into the fray is a new approach. It makes us hopeful that this will yield a more positive outcome.

Yes patient recruitment is challenging. But it is the patient centric approach that requires high touch and well thought out strategies. In 20 years of our specialization in this field, we continue to work through the challenge of successfully finding patients using multiple channels. The Internet is just one of them.