Signant Health transforms the patient experience to accelerate clinical trials

Client: Signant Health

Region: North America

Industry: Life sciences

Client Challenge: Signant Health needed to enroll tens of thousands of patients to be part of the clinical trial for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine

Solution: Signant Health transformed the patient experience using the ServiceNow NOW platform to be ready to execute one of the most difficult studies to date in four weeks, which involved managing incidents from 46,000 patients

Benefits:

• Easily scaled to meet the ongoing demands of managing multiple studies related to vaccines and COVID-19 treatments
• Achieved a 95 percent patient satisfaction rate with a more customer-focused experience
• Delivered quality data while keeping patients engaged

The goal at Signant Health is to improve the lives of patients, sites, and study teams worldwide by providing simple, intuitive technology that streamlines clinical trials. Formed by a merger in 2018, Signant Health has emerged as a leader in clinical trials, one that understands the patient journey and uses its experience to create technology developed by clinicians for clinicians.

The company works closely with hospitals, patients, and pharmaceutical companies, and its solutions are being used by more than 400,000 patients involved in 700 unique clinical trials across 80 countries and six continents.

“Top pharmaceutical companies have trusted Signant Health for more than 20 years based on our advanced technology and our team of experts,” says Adina Tapalaga, Vice President of Global Support Services, Signant Health. “Companies can select individual solutions to integrate with our current system or opt for our full suite for the best quality data. We proudly staff industry-leading subject matter experts who are available to advise throughout the entire process.”

Delivering on a coronavirus vaccine

Typically, seasonal timing, dynamic geographical hot spots, and other study-specific factors dictate clinical trial start-up time. But the pandemic brought a whole new level of urgency. In 2020, Pfizer awarded the clinical trial management for its COVID-19 vaccine to Signant Health. For the trial to be effective, it would require tens of thousands of patients to be enrolled and complete the process.

“In vaccine cases such as COVID-19, time is of the essence,” says Tapalaga. “Sponsors and clinical research organizations are pressured to meet rapid start-up times and depend on quality data for patients. There is simply no time or room for error. Retaining patients and obtaining their real-time data is of the utmost importance.”

The clinical trial management awarded to Signant Health was one of the most difficult studies executed to date. To manage all incidents from 46,000 patients, it was launched in only four weeks. Patient retention issues, for instance, can stem from not adequately preparing participants for a trial. In addition, clinical trial requirements can feel like a burden, and make it too difficult to keep patients involved throughout the lifecycle of the trial. For example, patients do not want to carry paper diaries around everywhere and retroactive submissions can lead to recall bias, as well as poor or missing data. In vaccine trials, patients are typically healthy, so they are not necessarily thinking of their daily trial activities all the time. These patients need to be routinely reminded during the trial.

“We are always looking for innovative ways to deliver data quality while keeping patients engaged,” Tapalaga explains. “Our electronic patient consent provides an interactive digital experience that walks the patients through their trial activities and checks their comprehension. It alerts on requirements and even timestamps their entries. We also design electronic solutions to seamlessly integrate into daily life, so it is convenient for the patient to provide real-time data.”

Creating customer-driven experiences

Patients determine the success or failure of every clinical trial. Signant Health simplifies the experience for patients, sites, and study teams to help bring life-changing therapies to families and communities around the world.

Trials need more than just technology to succeed. Signant Health wanted to provide the best service possible to its customers. After analyzing its service desk capabilities in 2019, the company knew it needed to transform the experience for people in clinical trials and build the best support team in the industry. After an extensive search process, executives chose to work with Capgemini based on industry-recognized service-desk expertise and the ability to meet three key challenges: patient retention, support, and speed.

“Capgemini not only convinced us on their expertise, but also on the ability to work with us and apply this framework to a challenging industry,” Tapalaga says. “Capgemini has also been helping customers improve their service desk operations and customer satisfaction using a combination of robust processes, automation, artificial intelligence, and innovation.”

As part of the transformation, Signant Health moved to the ServiceNow platform to support a more robust patient experience. Capgemini helped develop and implement the tools for the platform to provide the best support to agents, which meant adding multi-channel solutions including phone, chat, email, a self-service portal, and mobile accessibility. In addition, Capgemini provides tier-one support and is the first point of contact for patients, and the Signant Health service team manages tier-two support and governance. This requires a very close link between the two teams.

“We embarked together on a journey centered around patients and sites with an ambitious target to deliver a custom customer-driven experience by integrating technology to facilitate a frictionless omnichannel adaptive and measurable experience,” explains Tapalaga. “Capgemini was a true partner on this journey.

“Capgemini is at the forefront of the contact with our patients and really acts as the shopping window, because they are answering calls from different sites and it is extremely important that the quality of the service is as high as possible.”

Transforming the service desk brought together process, people, and tools to provide a scalable and modern platform to keep patients engaged. With a more customer-focused experience, satisfaction among patents is at 95% and allows Signant Health to manage up to 400 concurrent trials.

Transforming the clinical trial

“Vaccine trials operate on tight timelines and deal with complex issues such as logistics, large patient populations, and global reach,” Tapalaga says. “Having correct patient data ensures data is on point and vaccines can get to market sooner. Capgemini’s flexibility and capability to mobilize resources in a very short timeframe was an important factor for our success.”

The transformation means Signant Health has easily scaled to meet the ongoing demands of managing multiple studies related to vaccines and COVID-19 treatments, as well as other projects, so it can continue to be the right partner in more groundbreaking studies.