By Maxine Bookbinder

September 14, 2015 | A new clinical recruitment platform enables patients to quickly search local clinical trials while allowing sponsors, CROs, and pharma to recruit trial patients and track test site performance in real time.

The portal is an extension of StudyKIK, a website launched in 2013, designed to provide an array of patient communities, from Alzheimer’s disease to women’s health, the opportunity to vent, support, and inspire each other, according to project director Jerome Chiaro.  Although the forums are operated by the website, they are independent and not associated with any medical organizations.

The company’s goal is “to bridge the gap between the millions of users on social media who may be interested in joining a clinical trial and all research facilities globally,” says Chiaro. “MyStudyKIK Portal is the Craig’s List for clinicals.” StudyKIK currently works with about 500 sites nationally.

Potential patients can see links to StudyKIK while on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat as well as Google and other search engines.  The website posts primary investigators’ advertisements and filters traffic through its proprietary software, matching inclusion and exclusion criteria, based on study requirements.  Participants in StudyKIK’s social communities who are interested in more information about specific trials can then enter a zip code; the search targets a 25-mile radius and directs them to clinical trials in their requested therapeutic area of interest.  According to Chiaro, the website also targets, “demographics and radius for every study, using our filtering software that interfaces with Facebook/Instagram (and other social media) before they have requested information,” which he says saves principal investigators time and money. StudyKIK obtains this from public data already posted on social media.  Neither StudyKIK nor sponsors have access to any protected health information.

Sponsors who run multiple trials nationwide can instantly track patient progress and site performances in real time.  The HIPAA-compliant platform allows primary investigators to drag and drop potential patients on the correct status in the enrollment process. For example, a 30-day study listing, with more than 60 patient referrals, can take research sites less than five minutes to track and can add individual patient notes, such as whether a specific patient is a good candidate for a specific trial; sponsors view all patient data on blinded notes. The MyStudyKIK portal tracks data for every study, from simple IRB advertisements to multi-site trials.  Sponsors can also immediately determine trial site feasibility and high performers. StudyKIK updates clinical trial campaigns weekly.

This analytic system pre-empts time-consuming individual candidate eligibility and update calls to multiple sites. “When sponsors must call every site and ask how things are, often the answer is ‘OK,’” says Chiaro. StudyKIK reimburses site recruiters with gift cards for time spent on data entry.  Patients log in for free and costs for clinical professionals vary; they can receive 60 – 70 referrals for about $1,500.