CAHG at DIA

The recent DIA 50^th Annual Meeting in San Diego provided an excellent forum for learning about current trends in clinical research. As an exhibitor at the conference, we were afforded a great opportunity to engage with the drug development community and share patient recruitment best practices. The various sessions offered valuable insights from sponsors, CROs, and other vendors, who help comprise the key stakeholders in clinical research.

Some sessions of note attended by the CAHG team during the conference included:

·         A presentation on social listening by Melissa Mottolo of Genentech.

o   Our insight: Social listening is one valuable way to tap into patient sentiments that can help inform how to recruit for a research study. There is still a lot of work to do, even within sponsors with dedicated patient recruitment teams, to show the value of this intelligence gathering tactic.

·         A case study around a new patient social media platform, MyHealthTeams, by Eric Peacock.

o   Our insight: One critical important question about online patient communities is whether they will be primarily used for collaboration and research (in the Patients Like Me model), or whether patients are more interested in support and empathy (more the model of myHealthTeams). Both approaches may be needed to fully reach and engage the maximum number of patients.

·         Presentations on the new breed of online patient communities from Inspire CEO Brian Loew.

o   Our insight: Dedicated online communities are still small, but growing. Not all patients will be comfortable discussing their condition online – even anonymously – but it will be important to measure how these active “hand-raisers” can influence other patients, even those outside the community.

I was happy to have the opportunity to again chair a session on pediatric patient recruitment that started a conversation around best practices for engaging parents about their children participating in clinical trials. Drs. Sue Tansey from Premier Research and Larry Eichenfield from Rady Children’s Hospital also presented during the session and provided invaluable insights from the CRO and site perspective. Dr. Tansey did an excellent job of highlighting research alliance groups working in both Europe and the US to engage parents about pediatric studies, while Dr. Eichenfield expertly related how a busy site is able excel by using a myriad of tactics to build awareness for trials in the local community. Both speakers sparked conversations with the numerous session attendees that will surely keep the discussion of this important topic moving forward beyond San Diego.

Overall, the DIA Annual Meeting was a fabulous platform for meeting other members of the pharmaceutical research industry and engaging in valuable discussions on how to move the industry forward in the coming years and beyond. We are already looking forward to next year’s meeting in Washington, DC!