Pfizer Ends Social Media Bid For Trial Recruitment - from Pharmalot

Pfizer Ends Social Media Bid For Trial Recruitment
A closely watched effort to use social media almost exclusively to recruit patients for a clinical trial has come to a disappointing end. One year after launching its so-called clinical-trial-in-a-box, Pfizer is discontinuing enrollment in the first such study that was designed to allow patients to participate from home by using computers and smartphones instead of going to a clinic or doctor’s office for medicine and check-ups.

The drugmaker hoped to create a model for saving money that would rely on personal technology to more easily recruit patients and monitor their progress. But while the gambit generated substantive traffic to the web site that offered information about the trial, the drugmaker was unable to convert that interest into significant numbers of people who were willing to participate in the study, which was testing the Detrol overactive bladder drug.

“Recruitment has been very challenging,” says Craig Lipset, who heads clinical innovation at Pfizer. “We used a lot of social media for reaching patients… Online patient communities and forums where people gather to share data and information. And there were more typical web-based advertising channels… We found some might have been incrementally better than others, but none were going to provide the true yield we wanted to see to make this project sustainable.”

The decision is not entirely surprising, given that Pfizer earlier this year acknowledged that patient recruitment was lagging for the trial, which received FDA blessing. At the time, Pfizer officials called the effort a learning experience and noted that some people remain reluctant about using social media to sign up to particpiate in trials, even though they use the Internet to gather information about needed medications and research into diseases (back story).

“I think it’s still a new way for patients to engage and there’s a healthy amount of trepidation from patients about participating,” says Lipset. “We know from data that, in terms of health information, many patients are not very aware of clinical research… And so, not having help online (from a physician, for example) for that decision-making process has been a barrier.”