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Summary
A client of A Life in a Day envisioned a new type of programme designed to optimise the patient experience during clinical trials. With over 200 R&D staff signing up, 94% said the experience would foster a more patient-centric approach to their trials.
And this is proving beneficial with better patient-led actions producing reduced burden, superior retention rated, richer data and reduced costs.
Building on excellence
Sophie had never doubted her R&D colleagues’ ability to design and execute robust clinical trials that answer pertinent clinical and medical questions, as well as satisfying regulatory requirements.
Yet she suspected their knowledge of and appreciation for what a clinical trial actually looks and feels like from a patient’s perspective was suboptimal, with potential false assumptions and blind spots they simply weren’t aware of.
From a business perspective, the rationale for this initiative was clear. Sophie’s employer is the sponsor of many hundreds of clinical studies running concurrently at any given time. So the company stood to benefit almost immediately by better retaining patients in its current studies.
Benefits for all
The immediately quantifiable impact of the programme was more than compelling. All 200 participants agreed that A Life in a Day had helped them think about the issues facing patients in new ways. 94% said that their experience would foster a more patient-centric approach and 93% noted that it had helped increase their empathy for patients participating in a trial. 98% of participants also agreed it had helped increase the patient focus in their work.
But even more useful to Sophie were the changes co-workers had committed to make on the back of their newfound understanding and sensitivities towards the clinical trial experience. These changes fell into two broad categories: promises to make clinical trial participants’ lives easier by reducing burden, and commitments to amplify the patient voice in protocol design.
The R&D leader who first envisioned the clinical trial idea with Sophie has clear views on how the business will benefit in the near term. Participants of the Clinical Trials experiences have spoken about the impact a low-burden patient experience can have on superior retention rates, better patient compliance with study-related requirements, and richer data (with fewer data gaps), all of which will boil down to reduced costs.
On the back on this success story, the asthma clinical trials experience is now available as an onboarding learning piece for new R&D recruits within the company and for those transitioning internally into key functions.
