MediciGlobal, the Only Specialty Patient Recruitment Company listed in 2008 Bio-IT World Best Practices Compendia

MediciGlobal’s ADapt™ technology is saving the clinical trials industry time and money for expediting the development of patient recruitment and retention programs.

PHILADELPHIA, PA, December 30, 2008:  Bio-IT World magazine has recognized MediciGlobal as a technology innovator in the patient recruitment-retention sector for its ADapt™ technology.

MediciGlobal is the only specialty patient recruitment company to make the magazine’s annual ranking in this year’s Best Practices Awards program.  The 2008 compendia of award entries are now available online.

ADapt is an innovative web-based system developed by MediciGlobal, that allows patient literature for recruitment and retention into clinical trials to be customized by language, cultural nuance, and legal regulations, for any country around the world. 

The system has proven to be highly flexible to meet the needs of its global users in different countries, as it speeds along translation, cultural adaptation and ethics approval of recruitment-retention materials.  Layout and picture choices can be made at the country level to ensure that cultural needs are met.  Additionally, the built in tracking system allows sponsors to track to timelines, when the recruitment program will be launched on a country by country basis.

According to Jon Butko, MediciGlobal’s Executive Director of Strategy and Innovation, “ADapt is currently in use by several major Pharma companies with global clinical trial leaders already seeing the benefits of starting recruitment earlier.”  He adds, “The system is a major advance in further accelerating patient recruitment and retention. This technology comes at a crucial time, when biopharmaceutical companies are focused on cost reduction and improved efficiencies.” 

Considerable time is invested in the development phase, when patient materials are customized by country language and even by study site. The investment can be significant. ADapt plays a key role in helping companies’ reduce their cost and shorten timelines. By ramping up patient recruitment faster, and giving study sites the personalized recruitment tools they need, study sponsors are improving their chance of success.

Benefits of ADapt:

  • Time and Money: Saves considerable time and money by launching a patient recruitment program faster.
  • Empowerment: Empowers countries in the development of their own patient recruitment materials without requiring considerable time investment.
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  • Quality: Delivers high quality recruitment materials customized to work for each individual country in which they are used.
  • Tracking: Allows the central study team to know the development status of every country with regard to materials translation, cultural adaptation and IRB submission.
  • Flexibility: Allows companies to rapidly change materials when clinical protocols are amended.
  • Control: Improves sponsors’ control over the materials development process.
  • Success: Gives study sites the personalized recruitment tools they need to complete enrollment.
  • Improves study sponsors’ chance of success

MediciGlobal’s ADapt is included in Bio-IT World’s Best Practices Awards Program and its compendium entitled Focus on Best Practices, The compendium from the 2008 program, profiles solutions implemented by winners, entrants and nominees is now available. http://thebiotech.net/js/Focus_on_Best_Practices.pdf


About the Bio-IT World Best Practices Technology awards
The Bio-IT World Best Practices Technology awards, which were established in 2003, recognize organizations for their outstanding innovations and excellence in the use of technologies, practices, and novel business strategies that will advance drug discovery, development, biomedical research, and clinical trials. 

 

A Real Life Case Study : Recruitment Best Practices

“ADapting” to an easier life as an EU based Patient Recruitment Manager….
It’s very easy in a modern working environment to assume that all the information we need is available in neat word documents or nicely tabulated excel rows and columns.
But that isn’t always the case.  This was brought home to me recently by a clinical trial patient recruitment manager, who was setting up a global trial for a medium-sized pharma company. Let’s call him Peter. 
Being a savvy manager, Peter realised that poor patient recruitment causes 80% of trials to fail to deliver on time or on budget.  To increase his chances for success, he developed first-rate recruitment materials for study sites to screen and maximise the number of patients who enroll from in-site databases.  In addition, he carefully implemented a range of retention incentives to maximise the number of volunteers who would complete the full number of visits.
Given the number of countries and cultures involved, Peter sent centrally translated proofs of the materials to colleagues in each participating country.  He wanted their “buy-in” for using the materials.  He also wanted the materials to be legally acceptable with accurate translations, and signoff from each country was essential to achieving this.

Peter electronically sent PDFs and Word documents of all the materials that included 20 recruitment and retention pieces in 18 different languages or dialects.  In total, he sent 360 documents. Feedback on the materials was very positive. However, Peter wasn’t prepared for the sheer volume of responses that came back in many different ways. The feedback he received ranged from:

  1. Neatly annotated PDF files
  2. Printed copies of the colour documents with handwritten changes – by the time these were scanned or faxed back in black and white, most were illegible!
  3. E-mail messages telling him how to change images or modify wording.
  4. Last, and worst of all, garbled voicemails verbally describing changes in different accents!

In short, Peter was overwhelmed.  In trying to respond to these, he had to instruct the copywriters and designers of changes, have the changes made and then send them back to the country for comment.  At this point, the whole process started again.  Phew! 
Each individual document could easily generate an average of 10 pieces of communication, and, again, each in a range of time consuming formats. He had 360 individual documents to track.  The simple spreadsheet he created to track changes and progress was now useless.  And the project was now taking over his working day.
Unfortunately, at the time, Peter was unaware that a time-saving solution called ADapt™ was available.  Now Peter knows!

The built in tracking system in real time has eliminated the paper tracking, and allows Peter to avoid a repeat of his past nightmare of tracking headaches. Using ADapt, he also showed that he could get the job done faster, saving his company time and money. He also showed that enabling recruitment and retention programmes to begin faster in turn improved the chance of recruitment success. 

After the materials were customised for each country using ADapt, all Peter’s colleagues had to do was press the “go” button on their computer screen and “presto”…within seconds, the translated and adapted materials showed up already designed on the computer screen. They were now ready for final internal and IRB/ethics review. Many back and forth steps were eliminated for everyone.

Today, Peter no longer needs to involve graphic designers in making editorial and custom changes; this is now done electronically right at the country level.  Back and forth communications with each country are now streamlined and unnecessary steps have been eliminated.  He now tracks the progress of each country in real time regarding their adaptation of recruitment materials. Now that the paper is eliminated, Peter’s desk is finally neat and organised, and he doesn’t have to stay as late at the office!

Peter now has more free time to take on other patient recruitment projects at his company….
In a particularly interesting new development, ADapt is being used by STUDY SITES to customise materials and even include specific information about the PI, research nurse, pictures and bios, travel directions and more.

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About MediciGlobal
MediciGlobal based in the U.S. and U.K., is a specialty patient recruitment - retention company, developing programmes for clinical trials of all sizes in countries around the globe. MediciGlobal's expertise in patient recruitment and retention ensures that biopharmaceutical and life sciences companies meet their clinical study timelines. MediciGlobal is one of few companies focused solely on patient recruitment and retention for nearly two decades. www.mediciglobal.com

For further information contact:
Ann Armillei
+1 484-674-6835
aarmillei@MediciGlobal.com