Email Communications Program and Extranet Result in a 23% Increase in Clinical Trials Enrollment

Client Overview

Our client is a multinational, specialty pharmaceutical company that is focused in critical care medicine.

Business Challenge

This client simultaneously runs multiple clinical trials worldwide, which creates significant communications challenges. Because these trials are so geographically dispersed, it is hard to create a feeling of membership in a team and to keep the doctors engaged and informed throughout the trial.

Clinical trial communications goals were to:

• Minimize the time required to enroll patients in each trial
• Minimize the number of errors that resulted in investigations or corrections during each trial
• Develop a new communications program that would have a consistently high level of professional standards in content and design, as well as create brand awareness

Solution

FulcrumTech researched, created and implemented a Web-based communications program that was sophisticated, yet simple and easy to maintain:

1. A compelling, goal-driven email communications campaign was developed including well-researched content focused on improving the enrollment process and data quality.
2. A powerful e-newsletter was designed to reach the broad base of clinical trial investigators and partners with content highly relevant to patient enrollment and data quality. The professional visual design could be used across many clinical trials.
3. A strong Web foundation was built to support email and create a community around the clinical trials. This included an extranet to support the numerous files required during clinical trials, providing ready access to the content for clinical partners, trial investigators and other users.

Results

Following the release of the newsletter, average monthly patient enrollment increased 23%. In addition, the quality of the trial data submitted was improved through regular updates and clarifications of how to complete the data forms (CRFs). Email open rates for trial communications ranged between 50% and 65%, with rates for some emails reaching as high as 85%. This compares to typical industry open rates of between 5% and 25%.

In addition, the new extranet now provides ready access to documents and forms necessary for enrollment, protocol and other trial data and can be updated directly by clinical trial staff. Because of both strong email open rates and an effective extranet, our client has significantly improved clinical trial communications involving important protocol updates and changes, thus, reducing errors.

[ContactUs]