Success Story

This account illustrates how American Meetings, Inc., (AMI) worked with a Fortune 100 US pharmaceutical firm to find a cost-effective meeting solution for the late phase 3 trials for their new drug.

The Challenge

This leading pharmaceutical firm needed to significantly reduce costs for the late phase 3 trials of their ophthalmic-area drug. This drug had some commonly reported side effects, which was making patient enrollment challenging for some sites participating in the trials.

Further training and education were necessary for these sites, but they needed to be cost-effective and efficient. The pharmaceutical firm was closing out its investigator program, data was slowing and funds were starting to be funneled away from this area.

Other requirements for this program included helping the client stay in touch with investigators, providing solutions for the patient recruitment challenge, and providing minor clinical updates. They needed to do all of this while fulfilling their regulatory requirements and keeping costs down.

This firm chose to work with AMI to move the existing live investigator meeting online to reduce costs and ensure that the remainder of the trials could be completed smoothly.

The Solution

The client asked AMI to help them recruit 130 investigators to participate in their online meeting in a four-week window. The goal was to increase patient recruitment by showcasing investigators’ successful methodology.

AMI quickly identified that Live2Web could be a good solution for this meeting. The Live2Web meeting planning format allowed the firm and investigators to communicate its strategies to late-stage sites struggling with patient recruitment.

The focus of this online program included communicating the successful strategies of high-enrolling sites and using these to develop patient recruitment strategies and tactics. It also involved a statistical analysis of the correlation between subjects enrolled and demographic characteristics, allowing investigators to better customize patient recruitment plans. In turn, it was hoped that this would restimulate site interest and enthusiasm, and alleviate some of the time required by study coordinators. AMI was able to provide this alongside their full-service meeting planning services.

The investigators provided several times and data options to participate in training via AMI’s WebEx software through MeetingSoft.com. The data being presented was extremely important to the success of the trials, so recruitment and participation in the Live2Web investigator meeting were crucial.

The Outcome

AMI facilitated the seamless transition of the investigators, who were expecting a live meeting, to the new online solution, with a requirement that the program was completed by the FDA submission deadline.

The unique Live2Web approach of this program saved the pharmaceutical firm over $310,000 in direct pass-through costs and reduced management fees, helping them remain within budget.

Blending traditional recruitment techniques, high-touch personalized elements and the modern online model helped this client achieve 100% compliance and participation rates for the program, along with beating its recruitment and execution milestone target by 10 days.

AMI successfully identified that Live2Web meetings would be an effective, cost-effective solution as part of the overall investigator meeting mix, leading to significant cost savings and implementation within just a four-week window.