Our strategy
We've got three levels of the clinical trial ecosystem that we'd like to target: patients, healthcare professionals and healthcare organisations...
Targeting patient recruitment
We want to make sure that patients have all the information they need to make an informed decision about whether to join the trial. We've developed a basic prototype of what a website might look like showing the key information to them. Under the aim of trying to recruit a diverse patient cohort, we've done research to see what can be done to position our trials as something that appeals to patients. We highlight side effects, expenses and trust as three areas of interest. Check out the mockup website here.
Targeting healthcare organisations
The patient demographics within the healthcare system are largely influenced by geographical locations, thus we suggest choosing the sites for clinical trials based on that feature. Involving hospitals located in areas with higher ratios of BAME populations would raise the chance to recruit patients from the targeted minority groups.
This might mean that a drug company would have to involve new sites but it can bring a solution to the underrepresentation in clinical trials. In the short term, a company could select from the existing pool of sites, choosing the most suitable ones. In the long term, they could involve new sites, building the facility and the network.
Steps for site selection based on geographical targeting
1. Identifying geographical areas in the UK where the % of BAME is higher.
2. Ranking these areas based on the prevalence of the disease.
3. Comparing the findings with the already existing collaborators.
4. Contacting the most suitable sites (workers of the hospitals).
Motivating healthcare professionals
Pharmaceutical companies are not allowed to contact patients directly in the UK, so medical professionals are the direct contact for patients getting involved in clinical trials and the main recruitment source. By motivating more, and more targeted medical professionals, we can obtain higher numbers of potential participants in clinical trials, including BAME patients.
HCPs will be the ones running the trial in medical centres and play a major role in ensuring continued participation in the study - we want a diversity of patients to sign up but also follow the study to completion. Statistics show that when working with new HCPs and on new treatments, patients from many ethnic minority groups in the UK are more likely to feel like they are not treated with respect and dignity, and this has led to a lack of trust. Many chronically ill individuals rely heavily on specialist or community nurses for emotional and logistical support throughout a treatment, and have preexisting relationships with their own nurses, making NHS nurses a potential source of reassurance to patients who are considering a trial without exposing them to new healthcare teams where trust is not already developed. The process of suggesting, discussing and completing a clinical trial should be as efficient for sites as is possible, while enabling a HCP to fully understand and actively collaborate on the trial their patient is participating in.
Check out the mockup website here.
How do we know if it's working?
There are a number of metrics which we can assess to make sure what we're doing is actually having an impact:
Visits to a dedicated section on the website, number of related enquiries, participation in events or virtual platform
ethnic breakdown of participants in subsequent clinical trials and patient satisfaction scores
Evaluation of number and value of new connections made
Statistics of patient participation to completion in the trials
Wider geographic cover in UK clinical trials
Our Presentation
Our Strategy Book
Datathon Slides Public.pdfStrategy book_Public.pdf