In short: A clinical trial was performed to capture patient preferences about treatment with biologics for rheumatoid arthritis. Patients received information about the disease/treatment options and choice task at hand, either by a text-based explanation or MindBytes’ interactive educational tool (created using EDU-GRID).
Results showed that our animated training materials did not change the preferences of patients, but improved choice consistency. This could allow researchers in the future to include more complex study designs with increased numbers of attributes, levels, alternatives or choice sets.

Want to know more? Together with researchers based at The University of Manchester, we created an interactive educational component using a narrative storyline, (‘training materials’) to be embedded within a survey that asked respondents to complete a Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE). The objective of training materials in DCEs is to inform the sample of respondents (general public and patients) about the questions being asked in such a way that they can make informed choices when they complete the survey. The type of educational tool and its features (level of engagement, realism, narration, voice-over, …) that would fit best for this specific patient population, was determined by completing patient, disease and treatment information into EDU-GRID. Two separate training materials were prepared for rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis but they contained the same structure and core content. The key focus was to inform respondents what is meant by stratified medicine and how the stratified approach can be used to target the use of biologic therapies.