Lisa LaLuna, WCG Senior VP of Patient Advocacy: Matchmaking to Save Lives

Lisa LaLuna has spent three decades in the pharmaceutical industry, and most of that time, she’s been focused on patient engagement and recruitment. Connecting patients to clinical trials is her passion, and in this episode, she discusses why matching patients to clinical trials is essential and how WCG is making it happen.

Pharmaceutical companies want to enroll patients. Patients want trials. But too often, they aren’t connecting.

CenterWatch iConnect trial finder solves this problem, she explains. It provides a way to help patients find trials. Doing this successfully requires three steps: Educate patients about what a clinical trial entails, make it easy for them to find and connect to a clinical trial, and help them find an accessible trial – e.g.,  not one three states away.

CenterWatch iConnect does all three. Patients can also save the trials they’re interested in and share them with their physicians and family.

So much is at stake: The first person cured of Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s or some other now-incurable disease will be in a clinical trial. “Think about that and how powerful that can be.” And then there’s the flipside: “There'll be no cures if patients do not participate in clinical trials, because we just simply won't have the data needed to get these therapies approved and available to patients.”