Harnessing Big Data to Accelerate Clinical Trial Recruitment

The pharmaceutical industry’s reputation is more positive today than it has been in a very long time thanks to its response to COVID-19. But now that the bar has been raised, expectations have been raised as well: If we can develop a vaccine in a year, why can’t we shorten drug development timelines overall?

Some of the highest costs and potential risks of conducting a clinical trial involve those associated with patient recruitment and retention. In a 2018 analysis, researchers found that a full 50 percent of clinical trials globally are extended due to poor recruitment performance. Delays are costly when study recruitment and enrollment are not completed on time or when sites do not meet their recruitment numbers, sometimes putting the study itself in jeopardy. The delay of a potential drug can cost as much as $8 million per day in some cases. Competition for patients is intense.

A relatively untapped resource is the many healthcare professionals (HCPs) who practice within reach of trial sites and might consider referring patients—if only they knew about those trials. Innovations in technology, data science and behavioral science are making it possible to efficiently and cost-effectively identify and engage with qualified HCPs, down to the individual level, and synchronize the content that HCPs receive digitally in real-time. The result can be a dramatic acceleration in patient referrals and enrollments that nets major time and cost savings.

The Critical Role Community HCPs Play in Referring Patients to Clinical Trials

Because of their personal relationship with patients, HCPs can play a powerful role in the referral process.

Now, thanks to advances in precision targeting, synchronized experiences and performance analytics, it is possible to locate the right HCPs in the right locations and drive awareness and interest through relevant messaging.

Syneos Health has developed a programmatic channelselecting platform called digital amplifier that enables clinical teams to reach HCPs on a 1:1 basis, at scale, across the digital environments they frequent. We couple this with advanced targeting—powered by advanced data science and machine learning—and actionable analytics to surround the physician with specific advertisements triggered by the physician’s digital preferences.

Successfully enabling person-level engagement with qualified physicians to increase their awareness of clinical trials, accelerate patient referrals and support enrollment requires the ability to:

Qualify HCPs using robust data

Geographic and patient population identification can be used to find HCPs within a specific radius of trial sites and those HCPs seeing specific types of patients, ranking each by their potential to refer patients who meet the trial’s eligibility criteria. To identify these potential recruiting HCPs, Syneos Health leverages the data of:

• 320 million unique patients

• 98 percent of U.S. HCPs

• 15 million daily encounters

• All of which are interrogated by our team of data scientists

"Innovations in technology, data science and behavioral science are making it possible to efficiently and cost-effectively identify and engage with qualified HCPs, down to the individual level, and synchronize the content that HCPs receive digitally in real-time"

Engage HCPs via personalized content and delivery

Digital amplifier aims to find the most sophisticated, effective system for synchronizing the content that HCPs receive digitally, in real-time. We have built digital amplifier as a cutting-edge technology platform that makes it possible to deliver ads to select HCPs, reaching about 85 percent of them hundreds of times over the amplification period and ensuring that the message is more likely to be delivered at moments of highest receptivity -- when they are online and exactly where they browse.

Measure and optimize targeting, referrals and recruitment with actionable analytics

As HCPs engage, performance analytics should deliver more than reports and after-the-fact dashboards. Digital amplifier delivers micro data on efficiency, reach, and individual HCP engagement metrics, which provides the information needed for personal follow-up.

Conclusion

Leading brands around the world have demonstrated the power and performance that are achievable when you find the rightfit customers, deliver personally relevant experiences, and connect disparate data sources to reveal new paths to customer engagement. There has long been a need to adopt innovative new solutions to the critical challenges involved with clinical trial patient recruitment and retention; digital amplifier borrows from these commercial best practices to reach HCPs in support of clinical trials.

Community HCPs not only can but want to have more opportunities to connect their patients with clinical trials that could potentially benefit them. In a recent Syneos Health study, 93 percent of HCPs stated that they would refer patients to clinical trials. Digital amplifier arrives at a vital time—bringing 21st-century marketing innovations to a field dedicated to advancing human health and speeding new therapies to the patients who need them.