New recruitment journey to clinical tests

Pierre Fabre Laboratories’ Skin Research Centre assesses each dermo-cosmetic product before it is marketed. Its multidisciplinary team of 70 employees designs, carries out and supervises an average of 700 clinical studies each year, with a panel of more than 5000 volunteers, mainly recruited via a platform that no longer met current web standards.

In order to ensure effective management of these operations, SQLI came up with and developed a new recruitment and management tool for the panel, focusing on the journey of volunteer participants, who are mainly recruited online.

Optimise processes for the volunteers and business teams

Following the overhaul of its website, Group Pierre Fabre once again turned to SQLI to redesign another of its digital platforms, this time dedicated to applications for clinical trials.

The platform had to be totally redesigned, in order to both limit the number of volunteers abandoning the journey and to facilitate their management by the research teams.

The aim was to enable the business teams (clinical study managers, panel administrators, doctors and technicians) to track files more effectively, a task that was previously difficult due to inefficient tools and processes.

A framework to enable creativity

SQLI’s consultants first completed a project scoping phase, which produced a precise definition of the objectives: design a simplified process based on a redesigned platform, both for the volunteers and the centre’s teams. They then identified the business teams’ various needs. Using this data, a digital platform was created on the basis of Drupal 8, which was chosen for its stability and security. Features offered by the tool include:

• Monitoring of panellists, their remuneration and the studies they have participated in
• Securing of health data in compliance with applicable regulations
• Appointments workflow with automation of panellist enrolment, invitations and replies
• Complete records for the panel of volunteers
• Business team access adapted according to the legal framework and each team’s expertise

A process designed for all users by users

Pierre Fabre wanted to provide a more polished experience, with a more user-friendly clinical trial catalogue. As the entire project was carried out in agile mode, the end users could share their UX feedback during the various stages, in order to improve the features.

When they arrive at the website, users directly see the «We are recruiting» box and «Be a volunteer» tab, and are then guided step-by-step to fill out an application form for clinical trials. The medical teams then take over in order to approve the application, request additional documents and make appointments. This is all done with automated messages sent to candidates.

Put online at the end of 2019, the platform makes the volunteer journey smoother and helps the Skin Research Centre’s team assist the people involved more efficiently.