Quintiles opens digital patient recruitment unit
Published: 05 Jan 2012
Fully integrated bio and pharmaceutical services provider Quintiles, ranked 25th in the World’s Best Multinational Workplaces list, has formed a new unit as part of its ongoing expansion into new markets and areas.
The Digital Patient unit for the first time combines the company’s online communities and digital expertise to engage patients directly in order to provide patients with information to better manage their personal health and to provide them with opportunities to participate in clinical research, observational studies and programs to better manage their conditions.
For its patient recruitment, the Digital Patient unit will expand its digital outreach (through search engines and social media) and draw on Quintiles’ two industry-leading online healthcare communities, www.MediGuard.org (a patient medication-monitoring website) and www.ClinicalResearch.com (intended to be a more user-friendly version of the US government’s ClinicalTrials.Gov site), which cumulatively have more than 2.6 million registered users.
MediGuard.org is currently hoping to grow its user-base by extending an open invitation to former users of the now-defunct Google Health, which was discontinued on January 1 this year.
Explaining the rationale behind the formation of the new unit, David Coman, senior vice president communications at Quintiles and newly-named head of the Digital Patient unit, said: “Today, patients are as likely to seek information online about personal health as they are about the weather. By unifying our digital patient resources, we will be better able to deliver proper content to patients while providing our customers with a more efficient channel to find the appropriate people who may be interested in participating in clinical, observational or disease management programs.”
Coman, an alumnus of Dendrite, has been with Quintiles for almost four years, and he claims that 95% of MediGuard.org’s 2.5 million registered users (based predominantly in the US, UK, Spain, Germany and Australia) opt to receive clinical trials information.
As well as providing access to an engaged global patient base, Quintiles, which had revenue of more than $3 billion last year, believes the unit will also relieve the cost and time burden of recruiting patients into clinical trials.
The formation of the unit is not a surprising move for Quintiles. Late last year, the US-based company, which has employees in over 60 countries, won three awards in recognition of its digital to bridge the gaps between clinical research, patients and clinical trial participants.
Published: 05 Jan 2012
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