Apps not the way forward for trial recruitment
pharmafile | June 28, 2012 | News story | Medical Communications | Pfizer, apps, digital, virtual trial
After Pfizer admitted defeat in the first ever ‘virtual trial’ earlier this year, it seems that we are not yet ready for this type of online recruitment.
Speaking at DIA 2012 Neil Weisman, executive VP and general manager of Blue Chip Patient Recruitment, said: “If we’re using [mobile technologies] as a means to recruit patients, we’re not there yet.”
According to a new study from Weisman’s firm just 18% of consumers use their mobile phones to download health-related apps, and only a quarter use their smartphones to visit health-related websites.
But the survey suggests these patients are not looking for apps to learn more about clinical trials, and Weisman says that this reluctance to download and use apps is common.
He said: “There’s been a lot of traditional market research in consumer packaged goods and other industries, that people really use only a couple of apps on their phone or their tablets.
“What we’ve seen is that people are now less likely to download random apps that they won’t use because they’ll just take up space. You’ll see that more with phones because it’ll affect more of your phone’s memory and operational speed if you have a lot of programs running in the background.
“But also, some of these apps are gimmicky, and unless they are providing a real value add to their daily lives, will give them something interesting and useful and a strong reason to continue using them, it’s just white noise.
“Maybe they’ll get one or two usages, but as a real tactical ploy to recruit patients, we’re not there yet.”
Virtual failure
Attention has been drawn to this topic after Pfizer’s virtual trial failure this year when it could not recruit any patients to its study for overactive bladder disorder.
As InPharm commented at the time, Pfizer had simply aimed its recruitment at the wrong condition, as most people affected are over 50 and may not regularly use the internet or smartphones.
Weisman said: “[Pfizer] tried to use a lot of digital communication and social media to recruit an older demographic. This is not the early adopter. This is someone now just getting comfortable with using social media and mobile technology, and the assumption was made that they would be there flocking towards the study because it’s different, it’s new, it’s innovative.
“And I think that was just a miss with the target. You need to go back to some tried, true, old-school blocking, marketing-esque tactics.
“When you’re looking at doing this again, you need to have a study that’s more in line with the demographics of where they were looking to targets. It’s like they were putting the tactics ahead of understanding the demographic.”
Ben Adams is the reporter for Pharmafocus and InPharm.com and author of the DigiBlog site. He can be contacted via: email or Twitter.
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