Mobile technology will have a huge impact on how we recruit patients in the coming years, but mobile phones can also be used to facilitate patient recruitment today. To help you navigate this new territory and separate hype from reality, I’ve invited 10-year mobile industry veteran Jeff Lee to share his expertise. – Rahlyn
Omniscience Mobile is a software development company that provides solutions focused on the clinical research field. We help researchers use mobile phones to enhance communications with study patients. We support different patient interactions including the use of text messaging for patient recruitment, retention, and the data capture of patient report outcomes via the mobile phone.
Why is the mobile phone important to patient recruitment?
Because the mobile phone is important to patients. The vast majority of patients have mobile phones, and they are using them in a growing number of ways, from banking to shopping to entertainment. Mobile phone users increasingly expect the organizations they interact with to leverage the mobile phone effectively. Clinical research is no exception.
What’s the best way to use the mobile phone in patient recruitment?
The iPhone has generated a lot of attention to the capabilities of mobile phones. That’s good. But, it’s also prompted a lot of people to assume that only smartphone users can be engaged on their phones. That’s not only inaccurate (smartphones make up only 35-40% of the market in the US, and much less in most other countries), it’s actually counterproductive. Here’s why:
Focusing on smartphones isn’t smart
Putting aside the fact that apps are very expensive to develop/maintain, and that most users don’t actually use the applications they download, my biggest issue is that the app download introduces friction into a potential patient’s response to your study. If you look at a traditional ad that says “click here’ or “call this number”, the patient has a direct action to immediately learn more and get involved in the study. Can you imagine a call to action that says “If you’re interested in this study:
go to your phone’s app store
then
find our app
then
download it
then
figure out where the app is on your phone
then
click on the app to learn more about this study.
That just doesn’t make any sense.
I’ve seen apps that basically pull data from clinicaltrials.gov, but I find it unlikely that many potential study patients will be inclined to download this type of app.
Don’t get QRazy!
QR (quick read) codes are 2 dimensional codes that can prompt a phone to go to a URL, download a contact, receive a text message, as well as other simple functions. Wandering the exhibit hall at DIA would make one think that the entire world is comfortable using QR codes.
But, as noted above, the majority of the general patient population doesn’t use a smartphone. QR codes require a scanning app to be used on the phone to capture an image of the code, and send it to a server to determine what action the QR code prompts. These scanner apps are only really available for smartphones, so choosing a QR code as part of marketing should be done recognizing that it will only be accessible to a minority of users.
But that will change over time. It’s actually changing fairly quickly as smartphones (and the associated data plans) quickly come down in price. But even when smartphone penetration doubles, QR codes will still rely on a change in user behavior that I think will take plenty of time.
Mobile users must be so familiar with the QR code that they know exactly which app they need to use on their phone (and where to find that app) so they can act quickly and scan that code. There have been some initial examples where QR codes have been successful, but I still think they are 18-24 months away from being embraced by a majority of mobile subscribers.
There seems to be a plenty of indiscriminate interest in QR codes among marketers. I just don’t think the deserve central treatment like this. By the way, this QR code doesn’t even work because a) it’s in the NY Subway, where there is no cell signal and b) the creative features a woman who’s arm is blocking the code, thus making it unreadable.
Text messaging works, now.
When developing our technology suite at Omniscience Mobile, we chose to focus on text messaging for our initial products. Rahlyn has graciously profiled our system in a previous post, for those that would like to understand it in more detail. We like text messaging because it works on any phone and the majority of users know how to use it.
Look at the difference between the % of mobile subscribers that text versus the percentage for using applications.
So far, this approach is paying off. We’re seeing very high response rates to our text messaging patient recruitment campaigns, and respondents are providing a significant amount of information via text message (such as Date of Birth, zip code, medical history, etc). Our systems can be quickly deployed, and we’re seeing some amazing ROI results coming in. By the way, since text messaging has a 97% read rate, text messages reminders in clinical studies also are very effective. Please feel free to contact us if you’d like to learn more.
Jeff,
Great article!
I sort of disagree with your point about the “smart phone apps” — They are mostly not targeted to patients, atleast our TrialX iPhone was geared towards physicians to refer their patients to clinical trials. http://trialx.com/img/tx_comic_3.png – More than 65% of docs use smart phones and Apps.
Check out the app here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/trialx/id333747465?mt=8
Chintan
Chintan
Good point, physicians are showing much higher adoption rates of smartphones. I agree that in a physician-centric strategy, smartphones make more sense. I’ve actually used TrialX, and I think it’s a well designed app. Are you seeing the level of downloads (and usage sessions) that suggest that Physicians are inclined to look for this information in app form?
Thanks!
Jeff
Jeff,
Thank you very much for sharing!
The reason that patient recruitment has not been “mobilized” is that there is no suitable vector app which carries and delivers message to targeted audience. Sigmaphone’s iPharmacy app (http://bit.ly/ipharmacy_iphone), one of the most popular medication app with more than 1 million users, including consumers, physicians and pharmacists, can be the right media to deliver right message at the right place to the right people. Your multi-step model can be shorten to 1 click, either a click-to-call or a smartphone compatible recruitment page. Android app is also available at http://bit.ly/ipharmacy_android.
Thanks!
Let’s look at this in the form of a very simple question. Is smart phone technology likely to be more prevalent or less prevalent a year from now? Will consumers (the real focus of recruitment) be more familiar with QR codes a year from now or less familiar?
no doubt. Smartphones will be more prevalent a year from now. They comprise about 40% of the mobile subscriber base in the US. currently, and I bet that a year from now, they will comprise about 50% of the mobile subscriber base in the US. Two observations on this:
1) penetration rates are much lower in developing countries, and their growth rate is much slower, so QR codes represent less of an interesting opportunity in those patient-rich territories.
2) One could assume that QR codes will grow at the same pace of smartphone adoption, which is to say by about 25% over the next 12 months. For the sake of discussion, let’s assume that QR codes grow twice as fast as smartphone adoption in the next 12 months…so that’s a 50% growth rate. The recent stats I’ve seen show that 6.2% of mobile subscribers have used QR codes on the phone, so that figure would grow to just under 10%. In my view, a reach of 10% doesn’t really make QR codes a compelling platform at this stage. I’d like to see it in use by 50% of mobile subscribers before it gets really interesting for me. I think that will take a long time, unless we see QR readers embedded in the scanners of iOS and Android cameraphones.