twitter recruiting

Drug companies target trial recruits on Twitter

SOCIAL media sites such as Twitter and Facebook are being tapped for clinical trial recruits in an exercise that may help to fast-track life saving medicine.

Drug developers in the US have found they can reach patients directly by cutting out the middle man, be it a hospital clinician or a contract research organisation.

Interacting with social media sites where people who are ill exchange their stories with followers and friends may prove a short cut to finding quality recruits.

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle is searching through Facebook postings to find 1350 HIV-negative gay men for a study of a potential AIDS vaccine.

Biotech guru Julian Chick ? the Avexa chief executive who strongly denies the company's own HIV drug research was terminated because of a lack of enrolments ? was asked what he thought of signing up candidates through social media.

"If it helped, we might look at it, so long as there was no detriment to the patient and only after taking advice from our contract research organisation," Dr Chick said.

Light-sensitivity specialists Clinuvel Pharmaceuticals is adamant it would not use social media for recruiting, even though it was an early adopter of Twitter.

In almost daily tweets, Clinuvel's 265 followers receive news about the biotech's drug-in-development, afamelanotide, as well as many seemingly unrelated tidbits.

Some of the more curious tweets lately have had links to articles such as "Can You Treat Acne With an iPhone App?" and "Rare 'white' blackbird spotted".

Access to "quality" patients, that is those who are at early stage of a disease, is challenging for small biotechs trying to run trials.

Many of these patients are signed up to trials with the big pharmaceutical companies and often the only candidates left for smaller researchers are those that are already at death's door.

Social media may allow small biotechs to recruit patients just after they are diagnosed rather than further down the track when their doctors have decided there is no hope left.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/drug-companies-target-trial-recruits-on-twitter/story-e6frfro0-1225847283641