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Home » Posts » Social Media for Patient Recruitment: Finally Embraced by Pharma?

Social Media for Patient Recruitment: Finally Embraced by Pharma?

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Social Media PharmaBig Pharma may finally be embracing social media for clinical trial engagement and recruitment.

Though pharma has experimented with social media for patient recruitment in recent years, its involvement has been tepid. In 2012, I wrote a post detailing the three major social media options for patient recruitment — listen, borrow, and build. Most of Big Pharma’s social media activity has been limited to listening or borrowing. For example, companies might contract with a vendor to recruit patients by “borrowing” from a community created by that vendor.

But building a social media presence that you own is “the most powerful and rewarding route you can take,” as I wrote in that same 2012 post. That’s because to harness social media’s greatest strengths, you must commit to a long-term presence. You need to put a ring on it, to paraphrase the great and wise Beyonce. And who are we to argue with Beyonce.

Recent Big Pharma activity suggests that clinical trials are entering the build phase of social media self-actualization. Companies are using social media accounts, with full corporate branding attached, to recruit for their clinical trials. They are going beyond mere clinical trial awareness (which is really important but not the subject of this post) and posting calls-to-action focused on driving patient referrals.

Let’s take a look at over 80 social media posts suggestive of a new trend in patient recruitment.

Criteria for Inclusion

But first, here’s my criteria for determining which social media posts (and thus companies) are highlighted. If you do not see a company listed, that’s because I could not find evidence it met this criteria. If you know of companies using social media in a way that meets this criteria and they are not listed, please let me know.

  • Big Pharma Accounts – Smaller pharma and biotechs have been more willing to wade into social media waters, but they are not our focus here. Also, accounts need to be owned by Big Pharma and not a third party. The former is building, while the latter is borrowing.

  • Recruitment Messaging – Posts need to be directed at driving patient referrals to trials and not about general clinical trial awareness.

  • Organic Posts – Posts need to appear on the company’s organic social media feed and not only as a social ad. This criterion is mostly out of practicality. I am aware of social media ads being placed using Big Pharma social accounts, but it’s difficult to uncover a good sample of these in a systematic manner. I know of at least one company doing its social media patient recruitment only using ads. None of these posts appear organically in their feed, so this company is not included below.

This final point is important because it means that the social media posts I’m highlighting are a limited view of activity. Big Pharma is engaging in a lot more social media patient recruitment than you see here.

Quick Reference

All social media posts are embedded for your viewing pleasure, which makes for a lengthy article. To see the structure of the article and skip between sections, use this bulleted and hyperlinked list:

Novartis

Of all the big pharma companies, Novartis seems to be most actively using social media for clinical trial recruitment. Novartis’ corporate Facebook and Twitter accounts will sometimes have posts about select clinical trials. In addition, Novartis created Facebook and Twitter accounts devoted exclusively to promoting their cancer clinical trials.

Novartis Corporate Accounts

For the Novartis corporate accounts, most recent recruitment activity relates to an Alzheimer’s study. Posts about the study received a good bit of engagement from the Facebook community.



The same Alzheimer’s study was posted to Twitter and received good engagement there too.

The Novartis corporate Twitter account was recently used to promote breast cancer studies and to drive people to their Twitter account focused on cancer clinical trials.

Whether on Facebook or Twitter, these recruitment posts typically link out to articles on the Novartis corporate website or to novartisclinicaltrials.com.

Novartis Cancer US

Most of Novartis’ patient recruitment posts are on social media accounts created for cancer clinical trial recruitment. The Twitter account was registered in 2009, but the first Tweet was not posted until September of 2014. Novartis’ Facebook account for cancer trials is relatively new, with the first post dated as November of 2015.

General Cancer Posts

Some Novartis cancer clinical trial posts are general in nature and promote all or a sub-set of their clinical trials. Most general posts are limited to Facebook. These posts link out either to novartisclinicaltrials.com or clinicaltrials.gov.














While the posts above promote all of Novartis’ cancer trials, the posts below focus on a sub-set of those trials.






Mobile App Posts

Novartis is also using its cancer clinical trial accounts to promote its clinical trial mobile app.


Protocol-Specific Posts

Most of the activity on Novartis’ cancer clinical trial accounts relate to particular protocols. These protocol-specific posts generally link out to clinicaltrials.gov, through there are exceptions.

Relapsed or Relapsed/Refractory Multiple Myeloma

This trial, known as the PANORAMA 3 trial, has its own dedicated page on the Novartis Clinical Trials website, which also links to the corresponding clinicaltrials.gov listing.

Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer with Brain Mets

Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer with Lung Mets

Tumors with FGFR Gene Alterations

This trial, known as the Signature trial, is particularly interesting because patients do not have to go to a research site to participate.

Breast Cancer








Pfizer

Pfizer is taking a different approach than Novartis. Most notably, Pfizer:

  • Is regularly using corporate social media accounts for patient recruitment
  • Doesn’t have social media accounts designated specifically for trial recruitment
  • Focuses social media recruitment activity to phase 1 studies

Pfizer on Facebook








Pfizer on Twitter

Boehringer

Boehringer hasn’t done much clinical trial recruitment on its social media accounts. But it did experiment with a Facebook and Twitter post about a systemic sclerosis study recently. So we may start to see more activity here.

Merck

Merck limited patient recruitment posts to clinical trial awareness week last year.

Parting Thoughts

Collectively, these posts indicate that Big Pharma is getting serious about social media for patient recruitment. Sure, only a handful of companies are represented but these companies are influential. None of this activity existed even 18 months ago. And since I’ve not included social media ads among the posts highlighted, what you see here is a very limited view of all Big Pharma activity. I regularly encounter social patient recruitment ads on social media platforms placed by Big Pharma.

This Big Pharma activity signals greater adoption of social media for patient engagement and recruitment. And by adoption, I mean using social media in the way it should be used — to create real connections with patients. For too long, we’ve approached patient recruitment transactionally, communicating with patients only when we have a new clinical trial that needs recruiting. This approach is operationally inefficient and it’s a bad experience for patients.

The unique benefits of social media give us an opportunity to do better. And we should take it.

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