inVentiv Health has announced a strategic partnership with Medikly, a provider of physician engagement solutions.

Medikly's multichannel digital technology helps pharmaceutical companies identify, engage and retain clinical trial investigators by applying a real-time view of doctors based on their preferences and behaviors online. Pharmaceutical companies gain a rich, multidimensional understanding of a physician's specific areas of interest, preferred method of communications and influence within their community.  Such insights help overcome barriers between those wanting to recruit investigators and the physician.

Medikly allows sponsors to discover physicians likely to be interested in becoming investigators because of their work and characteristics that predispose them to research or to recommend patients for a trial.  The technology enables sponsors to create communities for investigators, develop relevant and sophisticated medical education programs, then measure and apply engagement metrics to understand how healthcare providers will respond to messages.  It also allows a pharmaceutical company to expand trial awareness, build trust with physicians, accelerate acquisition rates and improve relationships.

"By now, we all know that digital technologies can streamline clinical trials and save costs, but the challenge is knowing which technologies to use and how to best deploy them to save the most money and time," said Raymond Hill, president of clinical for inVentiv Health. "This takes a special kind of expertise, grounded in broad global experience and deep insights into every aspect of drug development."

While Medikly is focused primarily on the marketing of pharmaceutical products, this agreement gives inVentiv Health exclusive access to its platform and data-collection tools to use in clinical trial recruitment.

"With the Medikly platform, inVentiv will be able to help pharmaceutical clients capture and translate multichannel data into insights and interactive experiences that reach and engage physicians," said Venkat Gullapalli, M.D., chief executive and founder of Medikly. "inVentiv Health has had the foresight to leverage the right digital tools to position itself—and its customers—ahead of the curve."

inVentiv has 13,000 employees working collaboratively across the globe as well as a network of a half million healthcare providers, that together give the company the ability to forecast industry trends and opportunities, allowing it to identify and integrate technologies that solve problems.

"This is the future of clinical trial recruitment," said Hill.

In May, analyst firm Gartner identified Medlikly's platform as a "disruptive technology" and game-changing innovation for pharmaceutical organizations seeking "actionable insights" from detailed practitioner profiling across social, face-to-face, mobile, digital, and web channels.

Earlier this year, inVentiv Health announced a strategic investment in Mytrus, which has launched the first FDA-approved electronic informed consent technology in the marketplace. Additional partnership announcements are planned for the coming weeks.