Referring patients to clinical trials is personal, study shows

Referring patients to clinical trials is personal, study shows By Kathleen Hoffman, PhD MSPH Why is it so hard to get physicians to refer patients to clinical trials?  One cynical assumption is that physicians are afraid they’ll lose that patient’s business.  Not so, according to a Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development survey.1 Doctors are confident about and familiar with the clinical trial process. The survey of over 750 physicians found a high degree of comfort with clinical trials; almost 90 percent said they were comfortable providing and discussing clinical trial opportunities with patients. Yet [...]

Patient and caregiver perceptions of clinical trials: Preliminary findings

Patient and caregiver perceptions of clinical trials: Preliminary findings By Kathleen Hoffman, PhD, MSPH Many of you have been in Philadelphia for the “Patients as Partners Conference.” Yesterday, Hannah Eccard, Research manager at Inspire, participated in a panel discussion titled, “Mapping Out the Patient Decision Journey.” The panel discussed the link between understanding patients --their lives, lifestyle, experiences-- and trial protocol design. Recently, Inspire’s research team completed the preliminary analysis of a survey to understand patient and caregiver perceptions and attitudes toward clinical trials. Over 1500 (1644), patient and caregiver members  experiencing either ovarian, prostate or colorectal [...]

A Look Across Inspire’s Annual Surveys

A Look Across Inspire’s Annual Surveys By Hannah Eccard Over the past four years, Inspire has conducted an annual survey of its members. Participation has been high, with an average of 10,000 members participating each year. This large pool of data over time provides a unique glimpse at the changes that have occurred in social media use in healthcare. The use of social media and mobile apps among patients and caregivers has changed dramatically over the past four years and Inspire’s annual survey data supports this. For example, in 2014, 70 percent of the over 13,000 respondents [...]

Patient Engagement through Internet Research and Clinical Trials: Annual Survey Results

Patient Engagement through Internet Research and Clinical Trials: Annual Survey Results By Hannah Eccard Inspire delves in to new developments and continuing trends among patients and caregiver members through its new publication, Insights from Engaged Patients. Details from this fourth annual survey of 9489 respondents are available to download below but here are a few highlights to get you started. Using ICD-9/10 to code members’ interests and health communities, we segmented respondents into health condition groups. The five largest condition groups in this survey were Oncology (i.e. all types of cancer and cancer-related issues), Autoimmune (Rheumatoid Arthritis, [...]