3x higher recruitment performance

The challenge

Recruiting patients for rare disease clinical trials presents one of the most complex challenges in healthcare marketing.

Many rare diseases affect only a few thousand people nationwide, making eligible patients difficult to identify through traditional targeting methods. Patients often experience lengthy diagnostic journeys, may never see a specialist, and can remain disconnected from clinical trial opportunities that could significantly impact their health outcomes.

A healthcare marketing organization specializing in patient identification and engagement for rare disease therapies was helping biopharmaceutical sponsors connect patients and caregivers with clinical trials and treatment opportunities. While the organization had developed a highly effective process for engaging and qualifying patients once they entered the funnel, finding the right individuals at scale remained a persistent obstacle.

Traditional audience-building approaches that relied primarily on healthcare claims data often resulted in large, inefficient audiences, lower precision, and higher acquisition costs.

The organization needed a way to improve top-of-funnel performance while maintaining the privacy and compliance requirements that govern healthcare advertising

The Digital Audiences approach

To improve top-of-funnel performance, the organization partnered with Definitive Healthcare and leveraged its Digital Audiences solution to build more precise, privacy-compliant patient identification models.

Rather than relying solely on deterministic healthcare claims data, the organizations collaborated to create a more sophisticated predictive targeting strategy that combined:

• Medical and commercial claims data
• Consumer intelligence and behavioral attributes
• Social determinants of health
• Channel engagement signals
• Longitudinal patient journey analysis
• Predictive audience modeling
• The organization’s proprietary rare disease expertise

Together, the teams analyzed patterns that often precede a rare disease diagnosis, including treatment history, specialist interactions, referral pathways, and healthcare utilization trends.

This collaborative, iterative process enabled a more refined view of the patient journey, helping identify individuals who were more likely to qualify for specific clinical trials long before a confirmed diagnosis appeared in claims data.

By continuously testing and optimizing audience criteria, the organization was able to move beyond traditional targeting methods and focus outreach efforts on highly relevant patient populations.

The impact

For rare disease organizations, success is measured by more than impressions, clicks, or registrations. The ultimate goal is to help patients find clinical trials, treatment options, and healthcare resources that may improve quality of life or health outcomes.

By combining healthcare intelligence, predictive modeling, and consumer insights, the organization was able to connect with high-priority patient populations more effectively than traditional claims-only approaches.

With Definitive Healthcare’s Digital Audiences, the company was able to identify more qualified patients earlier in their journey, reduce recruitment inefficiencies, and help biopharmaceutical sponsors accelerate enrollment timelines.