How is COVID-19 Impacting Patients and the Life Science Industry?

How is COVID-19 Impacting Patients and the Life Science Industry? By Jeff Terkowitz As a virtual business, Inspire has a head start in dealing with social distancing and COVID-19. Many of our employees work virtually. Our patient and caregiver members have always communicated virtually and during this time are actively engaged in discussing the impact the Coronavirus and COVID-19 are having on their behaviors, concerns and needs. Proactive as ever, Inspire created a new resource for Coronavirus including a map of where people are discussing their experiences, videos of Inspire members participating in our #keepusallsafe public awareness [...]

Continuing Critical Patient-Centric Research Virtually during COVID19

Continuing Critical Patient-Centric Research Virtually during COVID19 By Richard Tsai The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing all kinds of businesses and research institutions to find ways of working that provide results similar to what we’re used to gaining from human social interaction. For example, being mindful of the time healthcare professionals need to dedicate to the pandemic has resulted in tremendous delays in HCP-based market research programs. Many clinical trial sites have temporarily suspended work that not only impacts existing enrolled patients but also greatly reduces recruitment. How can we continue critical research programs amidst these challenges? As [...]

Getting the Real Story from Patients

Getting the Real Story from Patients By Kathleen Hoffman, PhD, MSPH Humans evolved in a storytelling milieu where stories taught and explained the world around us. Our brains carry this legacy, research shows that the brain can store more information and retrieve it more easily when it is in story form. Narrative is easier to understand, is more engaging, and is an effective tool to communicate science to lay individuals.1,2 Personal narratives make science relatable. But mistakes made in the process of capturing a patient narrative can be cumulative. When writing native advertising (sponsored content), copy [...]

Getting the Most from Online Surveys

Getting the Most from Online Surveys By Kathleen Hoffman, PhD, MSPH Do you wonder about online surveys? Are they reliable? Is there bias? A recent article by the Pew Research Center For Weighting Online Opt-In Samples, What Matters Most? 1provides guidance to allay those concerns. Pew experimented with different procedures for weighting results from surveys with online opt-in samples to discover which techniques best reduced bias on estimates. They compared online results with the results given for 24 benchmark questions drawn from “high-quality federal surveys,” public surveys that were conducted using more traditional methods. This was [...]