Clinical trials and patient recruitment are under additional pressure, given today’s challenging healthcare environment during the pandemic. I am writing this article from my eight plus years in patient recruitment experience and working at various patient recruitment companies. There are more companies today offering “patient recruitment” solutions to complete clinical trials. Why? Nine out of ten trials require the original timeline to be doubled in order to meet enrollment goals.
Clinical trials today have also become more complex and can have various endpoints needed by the FDA to complete the clinical trial. This is another barrier and issue for patients to be fully educated to participate in clinical trials. There are several contributing factors as well, such as site selection, in which 11% of sites utilized never enroll one patient.
In my experience, there are several ways to reach and profile patients for clinical trials. These include the various internet based platforms, electronic and manual chart reviews, community outreach educational programs, and more. Several of the main issues that have not changed since I entered this field of patient recruitment and have remained a challenge to enroll in clinical trials is “education”, “why” and “how.”
Let’s look at the internet platforms who are offering various solutions to send quality referrals for patient recruitment to CRO’s, Pharma, Biotech and Devices. These platforms offer patient education, profiling, pre-screening, referrals, consent, and possibly even all the way to randomization. More and more patients have access to the internet (smartphones are utilized and owned by over 81% of the U.S. population) allowing better access to information about their condition and therapeutic areas. This is done with several internet platforms and how they reach and attract patients looking for information regarding their specific conditions. One of the companies I worked with engaged patients by giving away “free” educational books regarding their conditions (i.e. Diabetes, Asthma). Once the patients entered the platform for their condition, they were exposed to several offers for information, coupons, free products, and even clinical trials matching their condition if there was a trial we were hosting in their location. This method worked well and the company was able to screen and profile many patients meeting the criteria of the trial. After completion of the pre-screening questionnaire, they were directed to either a call center or the investigator site for additional follow up. What became apparent was that if patients completing the “screener” and meeting the Inclusion/Exclusion (I/E) criteria were not contacted within 24 hours, that patient became more and more disinterested to continue on with the next step in the process (first office visit and consent). Several companies then began to offer “on-line” consent offerings, this provided additional engagement and interest by the patient to continue the journey to participate in the clinical trial.
In today’s Oncology Clinical Trials, CRO’s, Pharmaceutical, Biotech and Device companies are looking for the best solutions to overcome their patient recruitment issues and challenges. Oncology trials are some of the most difficult to recruit for, given all of the various Inclusion/Exclusion criteria that are required to enter the clinical trial. This includes type of cancer diagnosis, incidence and prevalence, stage, therapeutics that are currently prescribed, location and other criteria.
Our client has developed an innovative algorithm and approach specifically to educate consumers about Oncology Clinical Trials and pre-screens patients looking for clinical trial information meeting their current condition, location, and criteria. If you would like more information and learn more about how our client can be of value to your oncology clinical trials, please contact us to schedule a brief call to discuss.
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