BBK Worldwide^® Blog

Each year members of the industry gather together at Dpharm — a conference which challenges attendees to question how we, as an industry, can disrupt clinical research to reduce the burden to patients and physicians. This year's event will be held virtually September 28-29 and will focuses on making innovation stick in a post-COVID world.

What do doctors and nurses think about solutions designed to make clinical trials easier to conduct? Are they helpful? Do they alleviate burdens? And which ones do they prefer?

In this special Pharma15 Live! segment, BBK Worldwide^® industry experts Matt Kibby and Aaron Fleishman discuss recent Study Voices survey results that shed light on this topic. They examine doctor and nurse perspectives on services designed to provide support in conducting clinical trials — including services for virtual, hybrid, and decentralized clinical trials.

“We were looking at whether or not doctors and nurses at sites that were conducting clinical trials would appreciate different types of services that assist with their ability to conduct them."

-Matt Kibby, Principal, President, BBK Worldwide

Earlier this week, Elizabeth Gargill went one-on-one with Outsourcing-Pharma, discussing findings from BBK's recent Study Voices survey that reveal shifts in healthcare consumer attitudes and behaviors since the onset of COVID-19. In this in-depth interview, Elizabeth discusses why clinical trial innovation is more important now than ever before and how clinical trial sponsors can leverage the survey findings to enhance their enrollment and engagement efforts.

Clinical trial sponsors now have access to several new solutions that make it possible to engage with patients wherever they are — now more important than ever before as trials shift to hybrid and decentralized models.

Sponsors can transform their clinical trials with engagement solutions that prioritize patient care and convenience, helping maintain study momentum during COVID-19 and beyond.

Ready, Set, Go Virtual!

New virtual engagement solutions are delivering patients the convenience and immediacy they want in their healthcare experience. Solutions that support decentralized or hybrid trials, like BBK’s virtual RSG^® Card, are helping to remove some of the barriers to clinical trial participation that patients cite as the most challenging.

As a matter of fact, in BBK's recent Study Voices 2020 survey, patients selected "immediate reimbursement for study-related expenses" as the most important solution influencing their decision to participate in a clinical trial.

During the last two weeks of August we surveyed more than 1,200 healthcare consumers, medical professionals, and members of the pharmaceutical industry for their perspectives on topics impacting today's healthcare consumer.

The findings provide a unique look at current attitudes and behaviors that inform the patient experience. They provide clinical trial sponsors with a snapshot of a critical moment in time when we're seeing the rise of telehealth, the adoption of decentralized and hybrid trials, and heightened awareness of clinical research. They also reveal new opportunities and challenges ahead for clinical trial enrollment and engagement.

DPharm. It's one of my favorite conferences that I look forward to each year. This year we will be virtual September 22-23, but still the same great energy and excitement. DPharm is a standout event that challenges and reports on innovation, with the goal of shaking up the way we conduct clinical trials so that we can reduce patient / physician burden and create greater efficiencies.

Survey Results Empower Clinical Trial Sponsors with New Opportunities for Patient Engagement

Our latest "Study Voices" survey challenges the long-held belief that the clinical trial experience should be approached differently than the healthcare consumer experience. The latest “Study Voices” survey – part of an ongoing series of surveys designed to shed light on key clinical research trends – explores patient attitudes towards technology,  healthcare affordability, physician access, transparency, and quality of care. It features responses from 2,067 individuals – 63% of whom identify themselves as healthcare consumers and 38% of whom identify themselves as clinical trial participants. The research was spearheaded by BBK's MythBusters team of Aaron Fleishman, Matt Kibby, Jessica Kim, Maddy Johnson and Elizabeth Gargill.

Myths are stubborn, persistent, and can easily put your well-intentioned clinical trial enrollment efforts at risk. But spotting and correcting them can be a challenge. To help the industry discern fact from fiction, we assembled our own MythBusters team, dedicated to confirming or busting common clinical trial myths. Empowered with data from our industry-wide surveys of patients, physicians, and clinical trial sponsors, the team identifies pervasive myths, puts them to the test, and arrives at a verdict.

Last month, in partnership with Health Union, we surveyed over 200 patients on health app use. The findings not only dispel some common myths about app use, but they provide valuable insight that members of the clinical research community can leverage to enhance the design, development, and adoption of clinical trial engagement apps.

We recently sat down with Health Union’s COO and Clinical Business Lead, Lauren Lawhon, for a Q&A session to get her take on the survey results.