Chronic Low Back Pain Clinical Trial
In September of 2006, one of the top 12 international pharmaceutical companies contacted ClinicalConnection.com and sought
accelerated patient recruitment services for a chronic low back pain study. Patient enrollment among the 133 participating clinics was not on
pace to meet established goals and an additional 1,300 patients were needed within 2 months of active recruitment. Due to the large number of
participants sought, the study sponsor enlisted recruitment assistance from three separate vendors. These included a vendor for direct mail
outreach, a vendor to utilize television and radio advertising in 23 markets, and ClinicalConnection.com for online recruitment nationwide.
Within 48 hours after receipt of a signed contract, ClinicalConnection.com had completed all preparations to launch the
patient recruitment initiatives and was waiting for final approval from the study sponsor to begin. However, recruitment with the three vendors
was supposed to run concurrently and the final launch was therefore delayed by 40 days to allow the other vendors to prepare logistics for
traditional advertising.
The Chronic Low Back Pain study went live on the ClinicalConnection.com website on October 18th and immediately saw a great response from the many
individuals that browse the active studies every day (see traffic chart below). In addition, ClinicalConnection.com quickly activated the Clinical Ad Network so that the study
would be advertised on a network of health websites devoted to back pain, bringing hundreds of visitors to the study posting and
allowing them to learn more about the study and participate in the online screener. Finally, one week into recruitment ClinicalConnection.com began sending
over 6000 emails to members residing within 50 miles of active sites that had indicated an interest in back pain clinical trials. This email
outreach was spread over 3 weeks so that the call center would not be overwhelmed and generated hundreds of high-quality referrals.
After two months
the sponsor determined that enough referrals were generated to complete enrollment so recruitment with ClinicalConnection.com was reduced to just maintanance
of the study posting for two months while the study enrollment was being filled.
A call center was being utilized for this trial and referrals were tracked by using
unique phone numbers and online tracking codes so that results from each vendor could be evaluated separately.
During this short time frame, ClinicalConnection.com generated an impressive
1,396 patient referrals that went directly to
the call center and an
additional 750 referrals that went directly to study coordinators at various clinics as requested. During that same time
period direct mail generated 445 patient referrals. Finally, television advertising generated the most referrals, at 3,032, but the extremely
high cost of this advertising made it much less efficient. In fact, the cost of recruitment with ClinicalConnection.com was one-fourth of the
cost of direct mail advertising and one-thirtieth of the cost of television advertising!
We were also able to track vital statistics about our patient referrals like the percentage of screened patients that qualified
for the study. ClinicalConnection.com referrals had by far the
highest “qualified rate” with 46.7% of screened individuals being qualified for
the study. 32.6% of screened individuals that originated through Direct Mail qualified for the study while only 30.5% of individuals referred
by television advertising qualified for the study. Not only were the referrals from ClinicalConnection.com more affordable but the quality of
the referrals was much better as well!
The sponsor’s project manager was extremely pleased with the impressive recruitment results stemming from ClinicalConnection.com efforts and requested our permission to allow placement of the ClinicalConnection.com company in the sponsor’s list of preferred vendors. She
also personally communicated to us
“that you all were great to work with and [we] would like to get you in the loop here.”
