How High Engagement Unlocks Innovation in Life Sciences
February 27, 2024
Studion has over 15 years of experience designing and building over 1,200 clinical trial solutions. We are technology agnostic and 100% focused on designing the best digital experiences to engage and empower patients and collect high-quality data that deliver better outcomes. As such, we have the privilege of supporting the development and customization of clinical technology companies’ platforms in order to deliver innovative solutions to their various patient populations.
To achieve true patient centricity, the full patient experience from clinical design through execution needs to be considered. Tethering the clinical and digital design together provides us with the opportunity to truly unlock the potential of technology, leading to the innovation that the life sciences industry seeks. Thanks to our experience and our experts, Studion knows how to help our clients with this work. As part of our process, we have identified the following five key elements as our engagement philosophy:
Patient-centered design: We understand the differences across patient populations and focus on concise, intuitive workflows. Data quality is critical, but so is a design that doesn’t sacrifice usability and inclusion. Effective patient-centered designs not only have strong interfaces but also require just the right amount of data collection to reduce patient fatigue. The lower the fatigue, the higher the compliance and the data quality.
Active engagement: Recruiting the right patients is important. It’s equally important, however, to retain those patients. We understand human behavior and can design the right workflows to reduce the patients’ mental friction, which is key to a clinical trial’s success. In other words, it’s not just about reminding a patient when to do something; you also have to provide active feedback that allows each patient to see their progress and its impact. You want every person to know they are making a difference.
Global inclusion: A welcoming and clear setup is necessary to encourage patients to complete all steps of their clinical trial. Because clinical trials are executed globally, there are accessibility considerations for all patients, which impacts the selection of digital tools and transmission infrastructure. Patients’ different languages have to be taken into account, as does the capacity for translation among languages. In addition, certain patient populations, particularly those with caregivers, require specific accommodations in the design of the selected software and usability hardware.
Risk mitigation: Clinical trials are as unique as the participants. While not all aspects can be controlled, having the experience to design solutions to minimize disruptions and delays is critical. From having the right design to maintain data integrity to meeting the regulatory rigor of documentation to support globally deployed clinical technologies, these trials require proactive planning and processes.
Platform accessibility: Platforms need to be accessible, affordable, and available to everyone in order to enable the best outcomes. But because clinical trials are global, they require global solutions. Logistical challenges with importing hardware and software exist in some countries, such as China, due to regulatory and data privacy laws and must be confronted. In addition, any solution intended to address platform accessibility must look at a variety of differences among patients, such as whether or not they have reliable internet access, the different languages they speak and read, and what interfaces they can successfully use. You can’t ask someone with a poor Wi-Fi connection to communicate with your platform in real time, for example.
In order to create meaningful digital experiences, the right platform needs to be selected and customized to meet the needs of the clinical protocols in place. This must be done in order to show efficacy and safety, to allow the patient to drive engagement and compliance so that data is complete and of high quality, and to withstand the rigor of a regulatory inspection. Our five ingredients are key to identifying and building the best platform to meet your needs and serve all of your patients.