Delivering CAR-T therapy education in a virtual support center

The challenge

In Europe, more than 50,000 people are diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma each year, with the condition presenting a significant healthcare challenge.

Our client, a top 10 pharma company, was launching an advanced CAR-T cell therapy to combat the condition and wanted to deploy a metaverse-style platform to support patients and  healthcare practitioners (HCPs) throughout the treatment process.

A virtual platform was deemed the best possible approach, as patient engagement was paramount. The novelty factor of simulation-based learning was seen as a critical selling point.

This would need to be an immersive environment for patients,HCPs, and caregivers to learn more about the unique cell therapy process.

Our connected solution

The platform has two environments – one for patients and caregivers and the other for healthcare practitioners, with content tailored for each audience.

Prototypes of the innovative platform were developed by Inizio Medical and tested with users through mixed methodology market research by Inizio Advisory,  in a collaborative effort with the client.

The project team used a bulletin board to test the content of the prototypes over a six-week period, with the help of respondents recruited from each target stakeholder group. Our respondents rated the material on relevance, clarity and helpfulness as well as answered open-ended questions to explain the ‘why?’ behind their feedback for our teams to analyze.

We also tested the platform’s navigation with the same group of respondents. Each person also took part in two 30-minute interviews, covering materials they’d already seen on the bulletin board, but set in the context of the virtual online platform. By sharing their screens, respondents could show moderators how they would navigate each part of the platform.

To improve the platform, we set up an ongoing feedback loop, enabling our client and the development teams to receive regular insights on both content and navigation. The Inizio Medical team then implemented iterative changes informed by the research findings.

To deliver the final results in a way that wouldn’t be overwhelming — given the large volume of insights —in a format that would be easy to assimilate across all the different stakeholder groups, an innovative metaverse-style output was designed to replicate the platform.

Within this, the key findings were overlaid on top of the platform along with respondent feedback to make the insights much more easily digestible and navigable. Doing so made it simple for stakeholders to make sense of the sheer volume of insights the team had garnered. Lastly, the Inizio Medical team optimized the platform to deliver a final, fully tested and finely honed version to the client.

The value created

Users now have the ability to travel through different rooms, or ‘environments’, representing a CAR-T center.

Once there, users can click on ‘hotspots’, which provide education on the CAR-T cell therapy process in a variety of formats. These include animations, interactive PDFs, quizzes, and information boxes.

Users are able to navigate through different areas relevant to their needs and make use of a well-designed system of drop-down menus.

A master version of the two environments is available at EMEA level, but countries are now being encouraged to create local language versions in order to reach as many people as possible. Thanks to ongoing research, the platforms will evolve over time to suit the needs of HCPs, patients, and caregivers including the development of a mobile-optimized version. Other regions and teams have already expressed interest in using the virtual platform for patient journey support tools in other therapy areas.

Customer testimonial

“The read-out was an “aha moment” for us. The report made it really easy for the team to extract the feedback and translate it into an improvement plan. That’s an outcome we never thought would be reachable in such a facilitated way and within timelines!”

Brand team stakeholder