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Patient Recruitment

Patient recruitment is an essential part of any clinical trial to a successful conclusion.  Without patients there can be no clinical trials and no outcomes, successful or otherwise. Recruiting the appropriate patients for each stage of a planned clinical trial takes time. It involves careful screening and matching the right patients to the right clinical protocols to be sure that each candidate meets the required criteria and is also sufficiently motivated to stay the course of the clinical trial. 

It’s not just enough for someone to want to participate.  If their health condition is too far advanced or, alternatively, not sufficiently advanced or they have other under-lying disorders that means they don’t meet the requirements of a clinical trial, they won’t be able to participate. Some diseases are so rare that patients must be recruited globally. Clinical trials are costly and can take many years to complete.

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It is important that the patients recruited also cover the spectrum of the appropriate demographic as to age, ethnicity and gender covered by the disease to be treated.  For example a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease requires a very different patient demographic to one for Type 2 Diabetes for example or Sickle Cell Anemia or Endometriosis.

Patient recruitment can be the most expensive part of a clinical trial and certainly one of the most time consuming, taking up about a third of the scheduled trial period overall.  Indeed failure to meet patient recruitment and retention targets can cause the whole trial to miss targets or fail over all.  The importance of this step cannot be under-estimated.

Negative publicity through fake news websites and the proliferation of social media conspiracy theories around the motives of so-called ‘Big Pharma’ can compound patient recruitment and retention challenges.  Over-coming suspicion and inspiring confidence in participants are an important part of carrying a successful patient recruitment campaign to completion. 

It is a conundrum of the modern world that consumers expect safe and reliable cures for every ailment and illness that afflicts humanity, but they also expect these treatments to appear without any human participation or financial investment.  It is a strange logic that accuses pharmaceutical companies of only being in search of profits while the massively lucrative alternative health industry, which goes largely unchecked and unregulated, is praised for its altruism, even though it too is profit-driven.

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This year, 2020, brings its own challenges as Covid-19 has impacted all aspects of life around the world, including on-going and potential new clinical trials.  The impact of the novel coronavirus, SARS-Cov-2, on all aspects of the medical profession cannot be ignored and you will see, on browsing the websites of the companies listed below, that this is a high-profile topic.

There are many companies specialising in the highly demanding field of patient recruitment and they all have their own specific fields of expertise.  Choosing a company with the appropriate strengths is important.  Here are some examples.

 

Patient Recruitment

Autocruitment makes a feature of the speed with which it recruits patients, going for a 5 business day set up time.  It makes use of 400 digital channels to reach out to patients who are looking for medical information online. 

BBK Worldwide makes a point of educating participants and consumers, providing ebooks and white papers as well as having a dedicated mythbusting section.  They have had 30 years experience in the field.

Clariness has enrolled patients in more than 800 trials in 30 countries.  They work in 35 different languages around the globe.

MMG is a long established company with a focus on tailoring strategies according to client needs.  They regard themselves as global recruitment strategists.

N-of-1 Hub provides advice about the design of N-of-1 trials and Single-Case Designs to clinicians, researchers, consumers and companies. N-of-1 trials and Single-Case Designs represent innovative personalized clinical studies that can compare effectiveness of treatments. They Improve patient engagement in their own health management and can be aggregated across patients to provide added value. They provide consulting and collaborative services for clinicians, researchers, clinical research organizations and pharmaceutical companies looking to conduct studies using N-of-1 and other Single-Case Designs.

Praxis focuses on the patient, aiming to learn as much as possible about them at the recruitment stage to make sure that the right patients are in the right trial and they also aim to keep patients and clients informed along the way.

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