Patient recruitment is a complex part of any clinical trial. Identifying eligible participants can be a challenge itself, but ensuring your sample size is diverse and representative, keeping participants engaged and complying with the necessary regulations make it even more difficult.
There are also dozens of factors that can increase this difficulty. While decentralised trials are becoming more common, many trials still require participants to be onsite. This restricts access for participants in rural and remote communities and creates an additional barrier for those living with debilitating conditions.
The result is smaller sample sizes from fewer sign-ups, which adds to the challenge of building diversity and representation in the participant pool. Additionally, if the trial process makes it difficult for participants to conveniently engage, there’s a chance the trial may lead to inaccurate or unrepresentative results – potentially wasting money.
All these barriers contribute to many trials failing to meet their recruitment targets. In fact, recent research found that 85% of trials fail to recruit or retain a sufficient sample size.
However, there are ways to streamline, accelerate and improve the effectiveness of the patient recruitment process. We’ve been working closely with healthcare leaders and our innovation partners to identify key strategies for recruiting clinical trial participants.
Here’s a look at what’s possible.
Build a pool of active participants to accelerate recruitment
While patient recruitment may be a major challenge for biotech, pharma and contract research organisations (CROs), many also have the resources available in their databases to solve it.
By offering a free weekly health check to everyone in your database – and extending the offer to new participants using social media – you can build a pool of consistently engaged participants.
During these health checks, you can measure patients’ vital signs and record their existing medical conditions to capture valuable data for your clinical recruitment teams. When you’re recruiting for individual clinical trials, you’ll be able to identify the eligible participants in your pool and send out offers to participate.
This approach can potentially solve some of the long-standing challenges in patient recruitment. Some of the benefits could include:
- Greater efficiency: Recruitment becomes more efficient as already engaged participants are easier to identify, communicate with and convince to join the trial.
- Lower costs: Faster and more reliable recruitment reduces trial delays and costs, ensuring a quicker path to data collection and analysis.
- Improved retention: Motivated participants who understand the clinical research benefits and face fewer barriers to participating are less likely to leave the trial.
- More diverse data: With consistent, remote engagement, trial recruiters can reach a wider pool of participants, including varied demographics and participants in rural locations.
- Easier compliance: Engaged participants are more likely to adhere to informed consent and reporting requirements, reducing the risk of regulatory violations.
- Data collection: With an active pool of participants, it’s easier to encourage compliance with data collection protocols and capture accurate, complete data.
However, enabling this isn’t as simple as just reaching out to participants. It also requires implementing helpful tools to support your strategy.
Use the right tools to accelerate participant recruitment
One of the most important steps for ensuring the success of the active participant pool is removing the barriers to clinical trials. That can be achieved by using the right tools at each stage of the trial journey.
Whether it’s eliminating the need for participants to travel or simplifying assessments, there are two clear opportunities where technology can support the recruitment and trial processes:
- Remote vital sign checks using bloodless assessments
Advanced artificial intelligence (AI) tools can now use photoplethysmography (PPG) signals from facial scans to measure key signs such as blood pressure, heart rate variability, breathing rate and oxygen saturation. These tools can then provide immediate results from the scan to the participant and trial coordinator.
This could be particularly useful for continuously capturing participants’ health conditions as they’re onboarded and while they remain in the pool for future trials.
Additionally, the scans are an effective way to encourage patient engagement early in the recruitment process. They also enable recruiters to scale the scope of the clinical trial easily without significantly increasing costs.
- Continuous app-based communication and engagement
Another way to break down access barriers during recruitment is by using an app-based approach to patient engagement.
Using the right app to host the recruitment and clinical trial journey, you can directly communicate with patients and keep them engaged during every step of the process. For instance, this could involve enabling participants to self-report health updates – such as their anxiety levels or mood – or delivering educational materials to keep them engaged in their health journey. Introducing gamification elements can also be effective, such as providing continuous wellness scores and rewards for reaching certain goals.
Furthermore, inviting participants using push notifications rather than generic email invites can help you encourage initial sign-ups and reduce the administration hassle and costs involved in recruitment.
Explore how you can streamline clinical recruitment
These strategies provide only a snapshot of how the recruitment process for clinical trials can be accelerated and streamlined.
We work with innovation partners to create bespoke solutions that help organisations manage clinical trials more efficiently. With more than 500 data specialists and scientists, we help customers identify a new approach to participant recruitment and implement a solution tailored to their needs.
To learn more, download our e-book, "Accelerated, Elevated, Optimised: How AI Is Enhancing the Clinical Trial Experience."
Or get in touch with our healthcare and life sciences team today to see what’s possible.