Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Patient Centricity at DIA 2014

Looking at the program for this year's DIA conference, one thing seems certain: we have undergone a seismic shift in our buzzword usage.

Many of last year's hot topics - notably "Big Data" and "Mobile/mHealth" - have apparently cooled down considerably, with only a few session devoted to them. Even Risk Based Monitoring has seen a big drop in the number of presentations addressing it.

This year's Next Big Thing is clearly Patient Centricity. This makes us excited - we've been talking to sponsors for years about how to improve clinical trial design and communication by engaging directly with patients. However, it also makes us a bit concerned - will the industry treat this as just another passing fad?

With that in mind, we've put together a list of sessions on patient centricity we will definitely be attending. The questions we'll be asking include:
CAHG Attendees at DIA
Come talk Patient Centricity with us
 
Paul Ivsin
Consulting Director
Ask me about: patient interviews,
Patient Aided Design
 
Emily Cortez
Group Account Supervisor
Ask me about: ePatient engagement in
MS, fibromyalgia, and IVF trials
 
Don Sickler
Group Account Supervisor
Ask me about: Parent engagement
in pediatric research

  • How actionable are the ideas presented?
  • Are new perspectives being offered?
  • Can sponsors actually commit to clear, open communication on these topics?

Most of all, we look forward to discussing these ideas with our fellow attendees. Want to talk in depth on patient engagement strategies for clinical trials? Stop by our booth (#326) - we'd love to share experiences on this!

Monday

  • 8:30 am - Room 3: Bringing the Patient Voice to Clinical Development
  • 11:00 am - Room 2: Engaging Patients through Digital and Social Media Communities
  • 11:00 am - Room 30AB: Fact or Fiction: Patient Engagement in the Drug Development Process

Tuesday

  • 10:30 am - Room 3: Social Listening as a Tool to Inform Study Teams on Social Media Strategy for Recruitment and Building Patient-Centric Trials
  • 1:30 pm - Room 30CD: Enabling Participants’ Access to the Electronic Clinical Trial Data: The Blue Button Project

Wednesday

  • 8:00 am - Room 33AB: Clinical Trials Technology Implementation: Bringing Together Patient- and Site-Centric Approaches
  • 10:30 am - Room 9: The Patient Point-of-View: An Unrehearsed but Revealing Conversation to Rectify Patient Enrollment
  • 1:30 pm - Room 2: Social Media in Patient Recruitment: How to Best Leverage the Digital Ecosystem
  • 3:30 pm - Room 3: Filling the Gaps and Speeding Up Results: What an Educated, Sophisticated Patient Population Can Do for You

Thursday

  • 10:45 am - Room 9: Parents as Partners: Overcoming Unique Challenges to Pediatric Recruitment and Retention


2 comments:

  1. sure but all of this is only as good as the real patient involvement - how any of these sessions have patients in them or were designed by or are chaired by patients? DIA also has to support the involvement of patients every year, or next year maybe patient involvement will be the mHealth of this year...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Rob,

      I absolutely agree that the largest risk is treating Patient Centricity as a passing fad - this will lead to temporary and symbolic "fixes" from pharma rather than real change.

      Looking over the program, there do appear to be a few sessions that include a patient perspective, though perhaps less than there could be. I do see that DIA has instituted a Patient Advocate Fellowship Program that will subsidize the attendance of up to 20 patient advocates, so hopefully we will hear their voices in the session Q+As as well.

      Paul

      Delete