Article: Trial Recruitment Without 'Trial And Error:' Validating Protocols And Identifying Investigators With Secondary Data Sources

By Michel Denarie, IMS Health

For the past 10 years, pharmaceutical marketers have been using comprehensive, secondary databases and sophisticated analytics to reach the right physicians with the right educational messages. That same information and analytical approach can be used just as effectively to help clinical research organizations (CROs) select investigators and reach the right potential subjects for clinical studies.

The challenge reads much like a mathematical word problem from your school days: of all the practicing physicians, what is the fewest number needed to study 3000 patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease? Implicit in that question is another: which specific clinicians treat the most patients meeting the study criteria?