Personalized Clinical Trial Experience

A clinical trial brings life-saving drugs to the market. Right from lab research to the market, the journey is full of challenges.

This blog focuses on a key clinical trial challenge – patient enrollment. The investment in patient enrollment is high. But the return is low. 40% of trial expenditure is on patient enrollment and yet 80% of trials never reach the enrollment target.  

Technology is stepping up to meet the challenge. The AI-centric approach removes the need to do manual screening. Advanced algorithms help in matching eligible patients with suitable clinical trials.

Better matching of patients and trials reduces the risk of screen failures and dropouts. Screen failures and dropouts are key hurdles to a clinical trial’s success. The other major hurdle is finding patients who want to volunteer.

Deciding to volunteer

When you volunteer for an activity, your decision is probably influenced by your aspirations, expectations, and risk calculations.

Don’t you think similar considerations may influence patients’ decision to volunteer in clinical trials? After all, they have a health condition at stake.

Hence, experiential designers pursue the human angle. When they study the patient enrollment challenge, they would focus on what patients want. This blog gives you an overview of the perspective and techniques of experiential designers in addressing the patient enrollment challenge.  

Interaction, impression, and involvement

As patients interact with the clinical trial ecosystem, they form impressions about the system. Let’s look at some of these interaction points.

• Enrollment communication. Pharma companies use multiple platforms to advertise and reach out to patients. The clarity, inclusiveness, and sensitivity with which information is presented can make a deep impression on patients.
• Interaction with sites. After patients go through the advertisements, they may want more information. They may call up, email, or visit the site. How the staff interacts with them can have a lasting impression on patients.
• Technology and platforms. If there is a digital app, patients would use it to know more about the clinical trial. Is the app easy to use? Is the tone sympathetic? Are the instructions clear? If not, then it may put patients off.

You’ll agree that the interaction-led impressions can influence patients’ decision to get involved in clinical trials. These impressions inform the personalized solutions that experiential designers provide.

Designing personalized solutions

Experiential designers use Design Thinking to create, test, and deliver personalized solutions. Some of the Design Thinking ingredients are:

• Interviews. Experiential designers observe and interview users to understand their agony, aspirations, and experiences. For example, talking to patients gives them insights into their pain points, expectations, and experiences. Several psychographic and demographic attributes emerge from the interviews. Designers plot the interviewees against these attributes and translate the emerging pattern into a narrative. They then divide participants into roles. For example, they would categorize them into doctors, patients, and nurses.
• Personas. The narrative is the key ingredient of personas. Personas are proxy users. You’ll agree that experiential designers can’t meet all users. It is here that personas come in handy. They consult personas when making design decisions.
• Empathy map. Experiential designers extend personas to empathy maps. An empathy map captures a persona’s personality, emotions, and behavioral patterns.
• Journey mapping. It’s a tool designers use to capture user experiences at various touchpoints. They plot experiences against each touchpoint and grade them.
• Prioritize. The grading helps designers to decide which experiences to focus on. Some use the Impact vs. ease Prioritizing matrix. The matrix helps prioritize which ‘opportunities’ they should focus on first.

You saw how by focusing on users, Design Thinking helps in offering user-centric solutions.

Designing personalized solutions for you

If you want to elevate patient experience in clinical trials, partner with us. Persistent has worked with 500+ customers over 15 years in designing delightful user experiences.

We also have a focused methodology called Digital Greenhouse. This human-centered, design-led approach speeds up your digital initiatives and creates a clear vision with ready prototypes in just four to six weeks. Jumpstart your digital journey with Persistent. Visit here for more.

References

• Johnson & Johnson gears up for fully virtual clinical trial
• How to Create a Personalized Experience for Clinical Trial Patients