Solutions | Retail

Automating Communications and Acknowledgements

A pharmaceutical company is running a trial on a new stomach medicine intended for travelers that suffer from upset stomach and diarrhea.  The company solicits participation on the web and matches medicines to travelers going to certain regions of the world.  The company is challenged with making sure its participants follow through with their planned trip, and that they take the prescribed medicines after eating certain foods from that region.  It takes multiple communications with the ability to receive acknowledgements from the participants that have indeed followed or taken the prescribed medicines and their current condition.  The company is looking for a way to automate the communications and reporting of the participants acknowledgements more efficiently to enable them to run more trials.

Solving this challenge will benefit the company in the following ways:

• An automated system will allow for more calls to be placed to the participant, providing tighter control on their activities and diet while traveling.
• Acknowledgements from the participants will ensure they adhere to the prescribed program of medicines and doses for a more meaningful trial.
• An automated system will require fewer employees to labor through communicating with the participants, lowering the overall cost of the trial and enabling the company to fund more trials.
• Providing acknowledgement reports from the travelers that they later confirm will support any claims by the company when audited by medical associations and government agencies.

Solution

The focus of this solution is a flexible, accessible Dial Out application where companies can easily get participants for market research and studies.

• The company provides a Web portal where interested participants register and provide all the background information the company needs to qualify them for the trial.  The data is stored on the company's network, segmented by trial.
• A company employee selects an icon on their Cisco IP phone that initiates the Pharmaceutical Trial Application; the user enters the trial identifier through a QWERTY Keyboard on the touchscreen of their phone; the application then provides a set of options including  Activate Trial which causes the application to access information from the company's database that includes schedules and messages to be sent to the participants.
• By entering the Pharmaceutical Trial Application , other options are provided, such as Trial Participants, which produces the list of participants for a particular trial and displays the results to the IP phone screen; geographic region or medicine being tested, current status of the trial and any other information relevant to the trial that is stored in the database is available for viewing.
• A trial manager receives a page to their IP phone and an email to their cellular device reporting a high average of participants reporting ill effects while participating in the trial; the manager at any time selects a speed dial button programmed to a message recorder and records a message that is sent to the participants, notifying them that the trial has been stopped for further research.
• The trial manager can access the database at any time to view the results as all acknowledgements from participants are posted to the central database for ease of access and maintaining a central depository.

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