A New Way to Recruit for Clinical Trials in the COVID-19 Era

This insight post is a summary of the original blog post authored by Michael Roth of Bliss Integrated Communications. View the original post: UNLOCKING CLINICAL TRIAL RECRUITMENT IN THE COVID-19 ERA .

Nearly every facet of our healthcare industry has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. It, therefore, makes sense that the majority of health news and information is COVID-related, but what about the other 99 percent of products and services that are still vital to our long-term health and wellness?

Bliss Integrated calls on agencies to take a hard look at once successful strategies and tactics for clinical trials across the marketing armamentarium and pressure test them for a post-COVID era. 

Bliss and Next Practices Group industry leaders started by re-thinking clinical trial recruitment (CTR) marketing and how to achieve rapid enrollment in this new era. 

New Obstacles

If you’re fortunate enough to work on potential COVID-19 treatments, you’ll confront a litany of unforeseen obstacles involved in trial enrollment. Even if you’re working on CTR that has little or nothing to do with COVID-19, you’re dealing with trial sites that you once relied upon being torn in multiple directions and dealing with issues including understaffing. 

To compound the issue, patient referrals have plummeted with physicians focused elsewhere. And finally, outreach efforts are falling flat because no one really cares about “foot fungus” during the age of the worst global pandemic since the 1918 Influenza pandemic.

A Smarter Approach

Bliss uses a hyper-agile, targeted marketing campaign that can be thought of as PESO (Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned) Plus. Their use of sophisticated algorithms helps them understand where to focus in each city, whom to reach out to and how local ecosystems actually operate. They can see what’s working, when to use paid, earned, shared or owned marketing tactics, when to combine strategies for greater impact and when to stop doing work that’s not as effective as they thought. Market truths guide their efforts.

The 5Ms Strategic Filter

To learn how to get optimal patient enrollment numbers, Bliss shares its 5Ms strategy. Learn what this includes by reading:  UNLOCKING CLINICAL TRIAL RECRUITMENT IN THE COVID-19 ERA.  You can also get other healthcare public relations insights from other partners as well.

Bliss Integrated Communication is an award-winning strategic marketing and communication firm based out of New York. They have expertise in public relations and marketing strategy and execution, social media management, and content development.