I'm speaking at the ACRP Global Conference in Seattle this weekend. The theme of my talk is 'How to create a subject recruitment website that works'.

One of the things I'll be addressing is how to use Facebook to drive patients to your website. My thoughts are highlighted in this video.

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I’ve just been invited to speak about how mobile devices can be used to boost patient recruitment and retention. My talk will be at SMi's London conference addressing the use of mobiles in healthcare. The conference is being held in October.

The timing of the conference is crucial as mobile device usage is exploding. According to Microsoft:

- There are 4 billion mobile devices in the world.
- 1.08 billion of these are smart phones (iPhones, iPads, Blackberries, etc).
- 3.05 billion can handle text messages.
- By 2014, more people will access the internet via mobile than via the desktop.
- 200 million Facebook users access the service via their mobile.
- 200 million YouTube videos are watched on mobile devices daily.

The last point is especially interesting to me. After all, TreatmentTrials creates web-based videos that explain clinical trials to patients and healthcare professionals.

On that note, some of our clients are using mobile devices to present these videos to patients who are in hospital or visiting a doctor’s office. This is giving rise to several benefits.

Firstly, it’s slashing the amount of time it takes for study staff to explain a trial to potential volunteers. Instead of spending 45 minutes doing this, a PI or Study Coordinator can simply hand an iPad with our videos to a potential study subject. That person can then sit in a quite area to watch the videos. 15 minutes later they’ve got a detailed understanding of the trial.

Next, if the patient is interested in leaning more about the study, they’re able to have a more informed conversation with the Study Coordinator and PI.

And that’s the second benefit of using iPads in this way: a more informed patient. Although we haven’t measured this, the feedback from study staff is that patients are finding it much easier to digest information about a study when it’s explained using a carefully produced video.  Especially as they can watch it over and over.

How do you think mobile could be used to boost recruitment and retention?

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I’m excited to announce that we’ve just launched a new patient recruitment campaign on TreatmentTrials.com. The campaign is targeting people with colorectal cancer that’s spread to the liver.

As with all our patient recruitment campaigns, this one offers an explanation of the study that’s simple yet detailed. In other words, one that’s ideal for lay people.

Our client for the Phase 2 study is the University of Louisville. Their study is being held at multiple sites across the United States.

 

There are three parts to the campaign we’ve created: production, media management and campaign management.

Production

We’ve created 5 TV-quality videos – the main one being about 15 minutes long. These feature two Principle Investigators, a Study Coordinator and a study subject.

To support the videos, we’ve also written several articles. These explain the study to the handful of internet users who can’t access online videos. What’s more, patients can print them off - then take them to their doctor.

Finally, we’ve also created an online pre-screening form for potential volunteers who want to get in touch.

Before handing the content over for IRB review, we conducted user tests. This allowed us to see if any of the information was hard for lay people to understand. Those things that caused confusion were then changed and re-tested.

Media management

With the above content hosted on TreatmentTrials.com, we’re primarily driving traffic to it by advertising on search engines. In particular, Google, Yahoo and Bing.

To do this, we first wrote the ads. Next, we identified the words that potential study participants would be most likely to search against. Then we purchased media space against each of these words.

Campaign management

Now that the patient recruitment campaign is live, we’re actively managing the search engine advertising. In particular, we’re monitoring which ads are delivering the most enquiries from relevant patients. That means each day we’re checking:

- Which search engines deliver the best results.

- Which ads deliver the best results (we’ve launched with 20 versions).

- Which keywords lead to the most ads being clicked.

- Which areas of the country deliver the best results.

Using the data that our monitoring produces, we’re able to keep improving the effectiveness of the advertising. Which, in turn, maximizes our client’s ROI. 

Let me know what you think of our work.

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Earlier this week, I found myself at two airports I’d never visited before. Despite this, I was able to find my way around them with ease. Why?

Because they’d been created by design teams who’d built logical pathways signposted with easy-to-understand information.

What’s this got to do with web-based patient recruitment? Quite a lot, actually. After all, like an airport, your patient recruitment website will only work if it’s easy to use. How do you achieve this?

The trick is to make every page self-evident to the user. In other words, just by glancing at it, an average person should know instantly what it is. And how to use it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Needless to say, the more usable your website, the more likely patients are to stay on it and consume information about your trial. Which means they’re also more likely to enquire about trial participation.

To create an easy-to-use patient recruitment website, you need to stick to several rules. Chief amongst these are the following:

Make the important stuff obvious
When a patient looks at a page, they should be able to tell instantly which things are most important.

Make it clear where the patient is on your website
People don’t always arrive via your homepage. Therefore, you need to make it obvious to them where they are on your site. For example, by offering a crumb-trial.

Tell the user where they should begin
Just like at an airport, you need to provide visual clues to help a patient know where to start their journey through your site. For example, by signposting the videos or text you want them to see first. And the enquiry form you want them to complete afterwards.

Make it easy for people to find what they want
Make it obvious to a patient where they should go to find something. Like a contact number. Or information about a similar clinical trial.

Minimize visual clutter
The less visual information used when presenting data, the easier something is to understand. That’s why airport signage looks so simple. By keeping your page layouts nice and clean, you’ll make it easier for people to consume information about your study – and get interested in joining it.

Use simple naming conventions
Always use words that lay people understand. That includes on your navigation items. And everything else on the site – like headlines.

Make it clear what is & isn’t clickable
Use a common website design device to show which text contains a link. For example, by making your text links blue.

Once you’ve completed your website design, you need to test it with users. The purpose of these tests is to see whether people can glide through your site as smoothly as you’d hoped.

Next, use the learnings from user testing to tweak your site design. Once you’ve done this, user test again.

What examples do you have of good usability?

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Can eligible patients easily spot your study on the web? If not, you’re missing a big opportunity to speed up patient recruitment. Here are three things you can do today to instantly increase traffic to your recruitment pages.

1. Advertise on search engines

A patient recruitment campaign on Google, Yahoo or Bing can be set up and launched in hours. What’s more, search engine advertising brings other benefits, too:
•    Your ad is only seen by people searching for relevant words – which you select.
•    You only pay when someone clicks on your ad.
•    You bid on how much you’re prepared to pay for each click.
•    You precisely control your daily budget.
•    You ensure your ad is only seen by people in a specific geographic area (e.g. a suburb, city or state).
•    You can stop advertising instantly - at any time.

2. Advertise on Facebook

Just like advertising on Google or Yahoo, a patient recruitment campaign on Facebook can be set up almost instantly. The main difference is that instead of targeting keywords, you target people by medical condition, age and location. In other words, only people who broadly match your eligibility criteria will see your ad. Other benefits include:
•    You set a daily budget.
•    You can change your daily spend instantly.
•    You can stop advertising instantly - at any time.
•    You decide whether to pay every time someone clicks on your ad – or every time they see it.
•    You bid on how much you’re prepared to pay per click - or every time someone sees your ad.

3. Advertise on a patient recruitment directory

Promoting your study on a directory gives you immediate access to the patients you’re targeting. Different directories offer different services.

For example, some simply host content that you've created - and then email this information to their database of patients. Meanwhile, others - including us - create bespoke information about your study. And then promote it via search engines and Facebook.

How do you boost your clinical trials' visibility on the web?

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I believe badly written patient recruitment materials are undermining study participation rates. What do I mean by ‘badly written’? I mean stuff that’s hard to understand – or just plain dull.

Needless to say, poor writing doesn’t inspire people. Or get them to act. That’s true whether you’re selling someone a car - or asking them to join a clinical trial.

What kind of writing will get patients interested in your study? Stuff that’s easy to understand. And a pleasure to read. The following tips will help your copywriter achieve both.

Avoid jargon

Patient recruitment materials are often packed with confusing medical terms. These cause patients to switch off. Therefore, you have to find a plain English way of saying the same thing. If you must use jargon, explain its meaning clearly.

Omit needless words

The less words you use, the easier it is to be understood.

Get to the point

To hold people’s attention, your copy needs to make its points quickly. That doesn’t mean your articles need to be short when there’s a lot to say. But it does mean they should be free of waffle.

Use short words

Long words need more mental energy to process. And the more brain power your copy demands of the reader, the less likely they are to consume it. So instead of saying ‘investigate’, try ‘look at’. And replace ‘prevent’ with ‘stop’. And ‘fortify’ with ‘strengthen’.

Use short sentences

As with short words, short sentences are easier for people to digest. That’s because they only allow one idea to be communicated at a time. Which is much easier on the brain than a long sentence containing multiple ideas. What’s the ideal length? Anything up to about 16 words.

Use short paragraphs

Just as it’s easier to read sentences that contain only one idea, it’s simpler to read paragraphs that focus on only one theme. Also, a short paragraph looks easier to digest than a giant one with dozens of sentences.

What do you think about the state of patient recruitment copywriting?

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Tim Benjamin explains how to create web-based patient recruitment content that will interest potential subjects.

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Did you know Google charges you more if it decides your patient recruitment ads are of poor quality? And that it places poor quality ads further down the page where they get fewer clicks?

It does this to give users a good search experience. What constitutes a good search experience? One in which the most relevant results are given greatest prominence. Therefore, when Google measures the quality of your ad, the thing it’s trying to judge is how relevant it is to the needs of the person doing a search.

Once it identifies the relevance of your advertising, Google assigns you a Quality Score. This is what influences how much you pay each time someone clicks on your ad. And where your ad will be located on the page.

So, how is your Quality Score judged? The first thing you need to know is this: it’s calculated every time the keyword you want your ad to appear against is searched.

For example, let’s say your patient recruitment campaign is for a type 2 diabetes study. And you’ve instructed Google to show your ad each time someone searches the keyword ‘type 2 diabetes’. In this scenario, Google will determine your ad’s Quality Score every time someone undertakes that search.

How your Quality Score is determined

To measure your ad’s relevance, Google uses several yardsticks. The most influential is how often people have clicked on it when searching the current keyword. This is called the click-through rate (CTR). The higher your ad’s CTR, the higher your Quality Score.

Google also looks at other data to establish your Quality Score. In particular:

•    The CTR of all the other advertising you’ve run.
•    The quality of the web page your ad sends people to (this is judged manually by Google employees).
•    The relevance of your ad to the keyword you’ve purchased against.
•    The relevance of your ad and the keyword you’ve purchased to whatever the user is actually searching for.
•    The performance of all your ads in the geographic area in which you want your ad to be shown.
•    The historical CTR of the URLs (i.e. web addresses) you’ve displayed in other ads (all Google ads include a URL at the bottom).

How your costs are affected by your Quality Score

While Google doesn’t provide detailed information about this, analysis by third parties suggests the impact is significant. For example, according to ClickEquations, if your ad achieves the highest Quality Score possible, your cost per click will fall by about 30%. Conversely, they believe the lowest Quality Score will increase your cost per click by a whopping 600%.

Final thoughts

When thinking about Quality Score, don’t forget that it’s not the only factor that decides how much you pay every time someone clicks your ad. The amount you bid  - and the amount your competitors bid – is also key.

Likewise, your position on the page isn’t just down to your Quality Score. Rather, it’s a combination of your Quality Score and your bid.

Got a question for me about Quality Score? Leave it in the comments section below.

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Patient consumption of online video is exploding, according to new data.

The Manhattan Research report says that in 2009, 102 million US adults searched the internet for prescription drug information.  Of those, 48% viewed an online video about medications. That was up from 21% in 2007.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve believed for some time that online video would appeal strongly to patients. And I think it has a big role to play in patient recruitment. That’s why I founded TreatmentTrials.com.

Needless to say, it’s exciting to see these numbers. The challenge now is for patient recruiters to start taking online video seriously. After all, potential study subjects already are.

What do you think about using online video to recruit patients?

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Advertising on Google and other search engines can be an effective patient recruitment tactic. However, it can deliver a poor return on investment if you don’t understand how to get the pricing right.

Before I show you how to do this, it’s worth summarizing the pricing model used by Google, Yahoo and Bing.

 

When you recruit patients via traditional media (e.g. TV, radio and newspapers) you typically pay a fixed fee regardless of how effective your ads are. In contrast, when you advertise on a search engine, you only pay for results. In particular, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.

Importantly, you decide how much you’ll pay every time someone does this. You do this by bidding on a certain keyword. For example, if you want your patient recruitment ad to appear when someone searches ‘metastatic melanoma’, you tell Google how much you’re prepared to pay if that user clicks on your ad.

Given that other organizations also want their patient recruitment ads to appear when someone searches for ‘metastatic melanoma’, you have to bid against them. The more you bid, the higher up the page your advertisement will appear compared to your competitors (in practice, another factor known as your Quality Score also determines your position).

If money is no object, you’ll probably pay anything to outbid your competitors in order to beat them to the top position. After all, the top position typically enjoys the most clicks.

However, an effective search engine advertising campaign isn’t just about getting lots of clicks. To deliver value, it obviously must result in eligible patients going on to sign an Informed Consent document. The percentage of patients who do this determines your conversion rate.

The higher your conversion rate, the better. After all, as the conversion rate goes up, the amount you have to spend to consent each patient goes down.

According to Google, two identical ads will generate the same conversion rate, regardless of where on the page they appear relative to each other. However, as the one higher up the page will generate more clicks, it will also generate more enquiries.  And, therefore, more enrolled subjects. But, as the one higher up the page will have a higher cost per click, the cost of acquiring each subject will be higher. In fact, it may be so high that it isn’t commercially viable for you.

On that note, how do you select an appropriate cost per click? The answer lies in following these steps (Note: the random values I’ve used are for explanation only – they don’t reflect real world numbers):

Step 1: Identify the value of a consented subject

Let’s say its $1000. With this figure in mind, you must work out how many patient enquiries you need before you get one consented subject. Let’s say you need 10 enquiries. That means each enquiry is worth $100.

Step 2: Identify the value of a click

Knowing that an enquiry is worth $100, you must next work out what percentage of patients clicking on your ad will enquire. Let’s say it’s 10%.

You then multiple $100 x 10% = $10. In other words, the value to you of a click on your ad is $10.

Step 3: Decide how much you’ll pay to receive that $10 click

To do this, identify how much advertising money you’re prepared to spend to acquire a consented subject worth $1000. Let’s say you’ll spend 20% of the subject’s value (i.e. $200).

Next, multiply the value to you of a click ($10) by the amount you’re prepared to spend on advertising to generate one subject (20%): $10 x 20% = $2.

$2 is the maximum you should spend per click. This may or may not result in your ad appearing at the top of the page. However, it will ensure you enjoy the position that best meets your business objectives.

If you have a question for me about any of the above points, please leave it in the comments section below.

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