InVentiv Clinical Trial Recruitment Solutions To Discuss Using The Digital Ecosystem To Speed Patient Recruitment In China

PRINCETON, N.J., May 14, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- inVentiv Clinical Trial Recruitment Solutions (iCTRS), created to accelerate trials, will speak to an expected audience of 1,400 people Wednesday on leveraging the digital ecosystem to speed clinical trial recruitment in China.

Ramita Tandon, senior vice president and General Manager of iCTRS, will speak at the 6th Annual DIA China Meeting on "Enhancing Clinical Trial Quality with Internet Technologies: Fueling Clinical Trial Recruitment through an Analysis of the Digital Ecosystem."

iCTRS was specifically created to integrate an innovative set of global capabilities to accelerate trials in a predictable and cost-efficient way. Tandon's talk will be based on inVentiv's use of digital, mobile, and social technologies to speed patient recruitment and how these technologies can best be used in China.

"Around the world, pharmaceutical companies are missing out on some of the best available digital tools to reach potential patients—and China is no exception," Tandon says. "Digital patient outreach campaigns geared to the culture and interests of individual patients can supplement traditional recruitment methods to increase patient awareness and support more enduring engagement."

Recruiting patients into clinical trials in China continues to be done primarily through physician referrals. As in other parts of the world, however, competition for patients in China is increasing and most patients are recruited through only a few treatment centers.   

According to ChinaBio, difficulty in recruiting patients now accounts for 56% of trial delays in China, which contradicts the expectations of sponsors who believe China offers easy access to treatment naive populations.

"Although recruiting challenges still cause fewer trial delays in China than in many developed markets, the problem of recruitment is growing," explains Tandon. "The most sophisticated companies understand the need for and are using cost effective and innovative methods for recruitment that go beyond reliance on investigators. Chinese patients are very reachable electronically."

According to the China Internet Network Information Center, 590 million people were using the Internet in China in mid-2013, making this the largest national population online anywhere in the world.  The 2013 figure is an increase of nearly 10 percent over the prior year.  Fifty-five percent of Chinese use the Internet, with 58 percent of users online daily, according to the Pew Research Global Attitudes Project. Meanwhile, cell phones are ubiquitous with 95 percent of Chinese owning cell phones and 37 percent owning smartphones, Pew reports.

"Our approach goes well beyond the traditional to focus on the patient, whether in Boston or Beijing," Tandon says. "We analyze what drives people – or more importantly - what prevents -them from participating,   And we know what keeps them in trials. The digital ecosystem is then leveraged to carry our messages."

iCTRS has built novel capabilities to recruit and retain patients, tapping expertise across 23 businesses that have been working in drug development, commercialization and patient and physician engagement for decades. inVentiv Health is the only company in the world that can both develop and fully commercialize products for the life sciences industry – and has done more of it than anyone else in the industry.

In China, inVentiv Health's office includes experts from iCTRS, inVentiv Health Communications and a range of other commercialization services.

About inVentiv Health
inVentiv Health, Inc. is a life science knowledge and services company purpose-built for the new healthcare marketplace. inVentiv has created a new model by converging a vast range of essential services to fully align with our client's development and commercialization goals. With more than 12,000 employees supporting clients in 70 countries, our global scale and broad expertise make us an attractive strategic partner for companies seeking to get medicines to patients in a complex operating, regulatory and reimbursement environment.  inVentiv Health's clients include more than 550 life sciences companies, including all 20 of the largest biopharmaceutical companies in the world. inVentiv Health, Inc. is privately owned by inVentiv Group Holdings, Inc., an organization sponsored by affiliates of Thomas H. Lee Partners, L.P., Liberty Lane Partners and members of the inVentiv management team. inVentiv Health transforms promising ideas into commercial reality for the financial success of our clients and the delivery of better treatments to patients worldwide. For more information, visit www.inVentivHealth.com.

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