MM&M: "Can marketing techniques save clinical trials?"
MM&M covered creative ways that companies are tackling clinical trial recruitment, and included Antidote's efforts:
"'The process of clinical research is still not well known or well understood by most people,' says Joe Kim, senior adviser, clinical innovation and optimization at Eli Lilly. 'At best, it's considered a risk, kind of like rolling the dice with your health. At worst, there's still that human-guinea-pig idea out there.'
Health-tech entrepreneur Fabio Gratton, CEO of clinical-trial awareness and recruitment facilitator CureClick, agrees that perception remains a major concern, adding, 'Nobody is ever specifically looking to be a part of a clinical trial. People sign up because somebody recommends they participate, or sometimes because they feel it's their last resort.'
Adds Tom Krohn, chief development officer of clinical research facilitator Antidote and formerly director, clinical open innovation at Eli Lilly, 'Patients are a very scarce resource, and most of them are either not aware or not interested. There is a lot of wishful thinking.'"