Inspire Case Study: Inspire delivers on trial recruitment project in one-third the expected time
The Challenge
A top five pharmaceutical company was planning a phase II non-small cell lung cancer trial.
The trial had stringent and lengthy inclusion/exclusion criteria, and only four trial sites in the US. The client asked Inspire to refer 12 patients for the trial. "The criteria were particularly challenging," recalled Amir Lewkowicz, VP of Partnerships.
The Solution
The client chose Inspire, which recruited for the trial through its Lung Cancer Survivors Support Community. Inspire helps companies Recruit in Advance™ , by creating large, engaged communities of likely clinical trial participants before they are needed.
"Our lung cancer support community is one of our largest and most active," Lewkowicz noted. "We were confident we'd be able to deliver for our client because our community was already in place, and is so engaged." Inspire created and implemented an outreach program to raise awareness of the clinical trial among its members. Inspire then queried its lung cancer community via e-mail at timely intervals in order to identify and contact relevant participants.
Inspire created and delivered follow-up questions to patients in order to determine whether they met inclusion/exclusion criteria.
Inspire established and maintained relationships with each trial site, along with a secure Web site for each for tracking and managing patient referrals. Inspire also provided a dashboard which allowed the client's investigators to monitor outreach and referral activity in real time.
The Results
The client set a target date for Inspire to refer the dozen patients in a year. In four months, Inspire referred 16 patients who met the referral criteria. Over half of the members who responded to the screener survey qualified, and were referred to a trial site by Inspire.
Additionally, the client wanted feedback on patient investigator encounters. Inspire, using its Quality Assurance methodology, surveyed patients on their impressions of the principal investigators. Inspire delivered a report to the client, which helped it evaluate how investigators worked with the patients. "This is an area of interest for pharmaceutical companies," said Lewkowicz, "but this kind of insight isn't always captured."
About Inspire
Inspire (www.inspire.com) creates and manages online communities that are platforms for access to highly engaged, authentic patient populations. These communities are built in partnership with leading patient advocacy organizations. Inspire's 80 disease-specific communities have more than 300,000 registered members.
Industry can access these engaged patient populations in a variety of ways, including market research, clinical trial recruitment, issues analysis, opinion surveys and promotion of brand awareness.
For more information, contact Amir Lewkowicz, VP of Partnerships, at amir@inspire.com, or at 617-372-2636.
