Fireside Chat with Alicia Pearson, Manager of Clinical Study Start Up and Strategy
The industry is in the midst of a long overdue movement that places participants at the heart of research. By doing so, individuals are more likely to find their participation meaningful and the research outcomes relevant to their lives—resulting in increased conversion rates, higher study completion rates, less missing data, and a greater probability that they participate in future research. With a commitment to treating participants as partners, Evidation is spearheading ways to drive participant engagement forward, for the success of our own projects as well as the entire industry.
In this fireside chat, we return to Alicia Pearson who previously shared her thoughts about participant recruitment, to dig deeper into strategies that build communities of engaged individuals for greater study completion rates and involvement in future studies.
Get to know Alicia
At Evidation, Alicia champions the participant experience and operational excellence, further advancing her mission to ensure that clinical research is not considered the last option but the best path forward. Learn more about Alicia here.
What are some of the barriers to engagement you’ve observed or heard within the industry?
The accessibility of trial activities is important. My previous experience running trials in rural communities made it clear to me that participants want to do a good job. To support engagement and study compliance, you really need to dig in and understand the participant’s experience. In several in-person oncology studies I contributed to, we noticed challenges with engagement. Understanding the importance of each visit for effective treatment, we shifted from relying solely on automated systems to more personalized engagement strategies. We started calling participants for their reminders and jumping on video calls to help answer questions about study devices. We saw an immediate increase in study activity completion—just from making them feel connected. This approach, although initially more costly, significantly improved visit attendance by making participants feel more connected and supported.
Another strategy I’ve found successful is to compensate participants just as you would any other partner in research. Many participants balance multiple priorities, and not everyone can afford to volunteer purely for altruistic reasons. Our approach respects this reality without compromising ethical standards, especially in observational studies where risks are minimal. Evidation has a policy of fairly compensating people for their time based on U.S. labor rates and the estimated time it will take to complete a task. We feel like this lets people know that we value their time, and it benefits the study because they are more likely to complete the study activities for the entire study duration.
At Evidation, we see participants as partners in their experience. We make it a point to listen to them about any issues that could become a barrier to research participation, and our support personnel are knowledgeable and empowered to speak up when they think an issue is important. This has had a tremendous effect on correcting problems quickly so as few participants as possible are affected, resulting in significantly reduced data loss and improved participant satisfaction. We follow up by acknowledging the issue and thanking them for continuing to help us improve our platform. This helps ensure they come back to us if they notice anything else, which is really important.
How else can we make clinical research more seamless and less burdensome for individuals?
On a broad level, I think we can't just consider one study at a time—we have to be willing to spend time and money up front to reduce barriers to participation in the future. Ensuring positive experiences also helps sustain engagement—so it’s worth that work in the beginning to create the best experience possible, not only for the participants but also for future business.
At Evidation, we’ve designed experiences that help build an engaged health community of real people on our platform—people with validated email addresses, a connected device (for some of our members), and a real interest in participating in research. Our members regularly answer surveys, complete quizzes, and contribute their wearable data as part of the Community experience. We make sure that being part of the Evidation Community stays valuable to our members by being transparent about how their data are used, sharing back relevant health information, compensating people for their time, and providing both community-level and individual-level insights from the data we collect.
The permissioned data we collect from members allows us to uniquely characterize each member. As a result of this characterization, we're able to pair them with new, relevant research opportunities either designed in-house or with our external partners such as healthcare, biomedicine, government, technology, and non-profit organizations. And, after a study ends, we make sure to ask our members for feedback on the research activities and their experience so we can find new ways to engage, interact, and provide value to them. I’m proud to say that we’ve been incredibly agile and responsive to this feedback, and I think that’s why people stick around and respond when we offer them new research opportunities. In fact, over the years, we’ve found that many of our members are willing to participate in research again and again.
Do any examples come to mind?
Yes, a study we conducted with older adults is a perfect example of this. The participants loved their experience, partly because they received content that was important to them, such as personalized readouts from their data. When we offered them a chance to be part of another study, we had a conversion rate of around 50%, which is huge. A typical click-through rate from external sources is as low as 1-2%; 5-10% if you’re lucky. I’ve mentioned this study in our last chat about recruitment, but I think it’s important because it shows what you can achieve when you invest in the relationships. Even when participants learned they didn’t qualify after reading an ICF [informed consent form], they reached out to thank us for the opportunity and asked to be notified of any others in the future.
What are your thoughts about the future of participant engagement in research?
There are ways to continue making the research experience more seamless, especially when we use technology. For example, we are working toward seamless authorization, where if you're already a member of the Evidation Community, you don't have to verify your email or register again when there’s a new study. Streamlining processes like this is important and a good investment to reduce the chances of participants permanently dropping off: any time a person has to perform another step, especially if they have to change tabs or change platforms, you see drop off. We’re constantly working on incorporating feedback into our platform and processes to ensure functionality remains predictable and makes things more accessible.That continuous improvement won’t stop, and we like it that way. Evidation is also proud to partner internally and externally to provide wearable devices to communities who don’t have them, further increasing accessibility. I believe that accessibility increases trust and is a great way to move people forward in research. We take a step forward first so they can also take a step forward.
Establishing a sense of community and providing a valuable experience can’t be overstated. Engaging with patients only when the need arises often leads to increased costs and lower engagement. A reactive approach can feel transactional, leading to lower participant conversion and compliance rates. Moreover, strong relationships built early increases the opportunity for referrals and positive word-of-mouth. A good, meaningful participant experience has huge returns because not only will that participant come back but they’ll tell their friends and family about their positive experiences. People can feel the effort and care you put in, or that you don’t.
To learn how Evidation can help support your recruitment and retention efforts, visit us here.