Early Outpatient Treatment for Covid-19 with Convalescent Plasma
Convalescent Plasma
A 2022 New England Journal of Medicine article co-authored by The Bliss Group’s Managing Partner Michael Roth and Colin Foster, President of The Next Practice, details a clinical trial sponsored by Johns Hopkins University on the use of convalescent blood plasma prophylactic or treatment for COVID-19 in its early stages. The Johns Hopkins University study broke ground in a few clinical areas of exploration. Part of Operation Warp Speed, the study helped advance researchers’ understanding of COVID-19 and helped expand the body of treatment options available. It also signaled a new era of media modeling in clinical trial recruitment in which The Bliss Group, including Quintin Maidment, serving as a key driver and liaison, played a pivotal role. It was Johns Hopkins’ lead investigators’ decision to include the two-healthcare marketing and communications veterans.
The Johns Hopkins team partnered with The Bliss Group and The Next Practice to build an agile clinical trial recruitment media model that circumvents the enrollment problems that typically plague clinical trials. Common obstacles to clinical trial recruitment success include, but are not limited to, inflexible marketing strategies, complicated enrollment and a lack of patient diversity.
In a time of heightened misinformation, competing trials and accelerated timelines, The Bliss Group and The Next Practice developed a media model that leveraged mathematical modeling and Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned (PESO) media strategies to attract and qualify a diverse participant pool.
Applied to other clinical trial recruitment campaigns, the innovative media approach has the potential to transform healthcare broadly. Efficient and agile media strategies like those applied to the Johns Hopkins convalescent plasma study can expand funding and shorten deliverable timelines to bring therapies and diagnostics to market in a swift and cost-effective manner, increasing access to tools, medications and treatments and ultimately improving the lives of patients.
Read more about our collaborative research and key findings in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Michael Roth, Managing Partner, The Bliss Group