Understanding diversity: data collection beyond clinical sites
Jun 25, 2025 
8 min Case Studies
8 min Case Studies
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Client success story
Vitaccess has collaborated with a UK-based charity and melanoma patients to develop a long-term real-world observational study in melanoma.
Case study by the numbers
participants recruited in 4 years
4 patient feedback sessions in 4 years
Over £5,000 raised for Melanoma UK in 27 months
Background
- Melanoma UK is a charity dedicated to increasing awareness of melanoma and its prevention through advocacy, education, and research.
- The charity formed a close collaboration with Vitaccess to co-develop a study collecting observational data from melanoma patients in the real world.
Objectives
- Melanoma UK wished to develop a database on the impact of melanoma on daily life.
- This real-world evidence could be made available to researchers, both in hospitals and universities, as well as to pharmaceutical companies developing treatments for the condition, to further the knowledge of melanoma and improve patient care.
- The study was to be developed in collaboration with melanoma patients, to maximize uptake among the melanoma community and encourage the greatest number of patients to share their experiences.
Key deliverables
- UK-based digital longitudinal observational study, collecting patient-reported data on the real-world impact of melanoma and its treatment over the span of four years.
- Co-creation of study app with patients to optimize usability and versatility; input from patients at launch and continued feedback sessions informed the implementation of a range of patient-centric features.
- Implementation of a compensation scheme, resulting in high participant recruitment and engagement.
- Demographic and patient-reported outcome data collected regularly and made accessible to researchers via interactive real-time dashboards.
Client benefit
- Robust RWE gathered from patient cohort quickly, at low cost, over an extended period of time.
- Optimal patient recruitment and engagement through implementation of patient-centric study app features.
- Availability of data in near real-time for use by researchers and pharmaceutical companies, to improve understanding of, and treatments for, melanoma.
- Ability to publish research exploring important parts of melanoma patients’ experience, such as side effects of treatment. Data from this study has been presented at 11 national and international conferences.
