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Patient recruitment on Facebook
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.
Categories: | Clinical trial patient recruitment
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Patient recruitment and retention: the role of mobile devices
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?Categories: | Clinical trial patient recruitment