Pharmaceutical services company Quintiles is expanding efforts to leverage its patient-information Web sites for recruiting volunteers for clinical trials and other studies.
The Durham-based company announced today that it has formed a new digital patient unit that will focus on online patient recruitment from its two websites that provide free health information to consumers. They are:
-- www.MediGuard.org, formerly iGuard.org, which was launched in 2007 and currently has 2.5 million registered users. The site provide patients with information about their medications -- including safety alerts, recalls and drug interactions.
-- www.ClinicalResearch.com, which has accumulated 165,000 registered users since its launch in 2009. The site provides information on clinical research in general as well as specific clinical trials.
David Coman, the head of the new digital patient unit, said Quintiles has been experimenting with using the sites for patient recruitment and is now in position to broaden its efforts.
"I think we have proven the model works," he said. "It is an exceedingly efficient way to attract patients" for clinical trials and other studies.
Attracting sufficient patients for a specific medical condition by traditional methods is a costly, time-consuming task.
Coman, who also is senior vice president in charge of corporate communications, said Quintiles already has several large-scale recruitment projects under way for its corporate customers.
Quintiles, the world's largest pharmaceutical services company, is a privately held company that generated more than $3 billion in revenue last year. It has more than 24,000 workers worldwide, including about 1,600 in the Triangle.
