Improving Clinical Trial Search

Business Problem

About 30,000 people in the world have cystic fibrosis and matching patients to possibly life-saving clinical trials is no easy task. Only about 10 to 15 percent of patients participate in available clinical trials.

User’s Problem

There are several reasons patients don’t participate in trials: they don’t feel eligible for trials, patients are unaware of trials outside of their home clinic, patients don’t know about trials, or when they find a trial online, the language is confusing.

Role

UX Research | Wireframing | Usability Testing | Interview Facilitation

Solution

I worked alongside the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to update Clinical Trial Search Tool, Email Alerts, and Drug Development Pipeline to make all of them more accessible to both patients and families and medical professionals.

Strategy

Stakeholder Interviews – 6 Group Interviews

The stakeholder interviews focused on learning from different people involved in a clinical trial, from the research coordinators who are recruiting patients to individuals with cystic fibrosis and their families. All of our assumptions revealed in the User’s Problem were realized, but we also learned more about finding trials; such as the burden of travel, a lack of trust in resources, the sense of duty to participate in trials, and barriers to recruiting patients to a trial.

Journey Mapping

From what was learned in the interviews, I mapped out the life cycle of searching for a clinical trial, to see where our search tool could fit. With the emphasis on education and matching patients with clinical trials, I learned the tool fit best between the Explore and Consider phases of the journey. The user will enter the tool with some amount of knowledge from their Explore phase and find familiar and friendly language in the tool, which will help them consider and contact a research coordinator to begin their clinical trial journey.

I tried to think of all the considerations and questions a user may have when deciding to search for and participate in a clinical trial. The tool itself is meant to arm users with all of the right information up front to not only find a trial, but also have good questions to take to their doctor.

Wireframes

For the search tool wireframes, I wanted users to be able to first see all of their clinical trial options and then narrow down their choices through a classic filtering search. From the interviews, I learned the five most important pieces of information to match a patient to a clinical trial; age, mutation, FEV%, distance willing to travel, and enrollment status, so these items were used as the filters and then repeated in the trial information cards for recognition. The tool also serves clinicians, or super users, through the keyword search, which supports searching by protocol number, which is the preferred way to look up a trial.

I made it easier to match patients and research coordinators by providing a standardized form that gives patients the power to say they are interested in a trial and begin the conversation.

The clinical trial detail page allows the user to easily read about the trial and empowers them to advocate for themselves and set up a consultation with a research coordinator.

The drug detail page is linked to from the clinical trial page so users can dive deeper into the status of the drug. This is important to users because they want to know how close a drug is to being on the market.

To enhance the education piece of these clinical trials, it was also required to integrate the Drug Development Pipeline with the Clinical Trial Finder, which had not been done before. The Drug Development Pipeline follows the life cycle of new treatments from Phase I trials to those already on the market for treatment. In the new design, users can click on a drug, learn about it, and see if there are any enrolling or completed trials, and access the results of those completed trials.

Usability Testing

A few of the stakeholders were called back for user testing. The results were exciting. Users were overwhelmingly accepting of the tool and excited for it to go live. Patients felt like they were heard and happy to learn, “a lot of stuff I didn’t know I wanted to know.” Research coordinators liked the customization and that the search tool let users show them what they want.