Originally Published MX November/December
2001

ADVERTISING, DISTRIBUTION,
& SALES

Winning at Clinical
Trials: It Takes a Lot of Patients

Effective strategies
for recruiting people for investigative studies are based on empathy.

Matthew Kibby

A healthcare product
manufacturer setting up a campaign to market a new device or drug must recognize
that potential customers do not so much shop for a treatment as make a decision
about their healthcare. It is imperative that a sponsor make the same distinction
when undertaking to recruit patients into a clinical trial for its investigational
product. Overlooking the emotional context in which healthcare decisions are
made, the manufacturer could alienate its target audience even before introducing
the first patients to the product during the clinical trial phase of development.
Product marketers organizing a patient-recruitment campaign for a clinical trial
must, put simply, understand the patients’ point of view and communicate
in the language of their experience.



But how can they know what is going through the mind of a person suffering with