Patient centricity is officially defined as the process of designing a service or solution around the patient. Sounds simple enough, right? For those of us in the clinical research space, it’s not always as simple as it would seem. The cultural mindset has to realign with the end-user in mind and in this case, it’s the study participant.
Oftentimes we try to “put ourselves in someone else’s shoes,” but frankly, until you’ve walked in those specific shoes, it’s just educated speculation. The individuals we want to participate in our trials are all around us. All we have to do is create a forum to get direct feedback on:
- What would motivate them to participate in a trial
- What would prevent them from participating
- If interested in participating, what expectations they have
You don’t have to ask your target audience every time for each new trial, but you do have to start asking often enough to build a solid, reliable foundation to execute patient centricity with precision.
Every individual, company, and association in the clinical trial industry is patient centric. The difference is the degree in which they implement activities to support the end game. The end game is bringing medications to market faster, and doing this by creating or supporting studies that have been validated by direct feedback from the end-user. In this instance, the end-user is the study participant.
Let’s take the “guess” work out of the equation by engaging potential participants and listening to what they have to say.
This is the first in our Patient Centricity blog series. Stay tuned for our next blog, “Focus Groups for Protocol Design”.