Delivering outcomes for patients achieves goals for all stakeholders
The relationship between the Sponsor, site, and solution provider / vendor should be working towards the shared goal of making it easier for patients, sites and healthcare professionals to engage in and deliver clinical trials.
Up to 85% of clinical trials fail to recruit or retain a sufficient sample size, leading to failures to meet recruitment timelines in four out of every five trials, even though nearly $1.9 billion is spent on recruitment annually.
Planning and implementing a flexible recruitment infrastructure and a comprehensive approach to recruitment is necessary for studies with challenges in recruitment. By optimizing strategies, trials can be more cost-effective and diverse2.
Hybrid and remote solutions can lead to more successful recruitment and improved patient retention by creating a trial design, focused on the patient experience, that reduces the burden on the patient. A hybrid strategy can also help trials meet timelines, potentially preventing the delays often experienced in the traditional model, protecting targeted trial milestones and recruitment rates.
By providing support to sites, either resource constrained sites or on-boarding and training trial naïve sites, trials can be run more efficiently and in locations that may not have previously been able to offer patients the opportunity of participation. This can increase recruitment by expanding the patient pool but it's not just about widening the net, it's about being efficient with the wider net -finding, engaging and supporting people willing to participate in research.
Another method, that goes hand-in-hand with creating greater access to trials through fully supported sites, is creating more flexible trials for patients, allowing them to take part in a clinical trial from their home at a time convenient to them either through the use of technology or through in-home clinical care provided by remote healthcare professionals.
Uptake of hybrid solutions is key to reduce timelines.
We help our clients navigate the most effective ways to reach cost neutrality through hybrid trial models for each individual protocol. Through consistent analysis of our performance, enhancing our processes, and driving added value through our customized delivery, we understand how to maximize the return on investment. Overall, the more patients and sites utilize the service, the more value can be extracted. Sponsors, sites and patients cannot realize the full benefit these solutions offer if they are not continually integrated from concept to trial completion. If the solutions are integrated into the protocol andunderutilized, little impact can be realized. However, as seen this model, increased utilization from 20% of patients using the hybrid model to 80 % can save a Sponsor up to 5 months of recruitment time1.
The integration of hybrid, remote, virtual, and decentralized patient and site solutions can have a substantial impact when utilized together with traditional methods to achieve overall Sponsor objectives. This alignment of solutions can deliver improved recruitment and retention which in turn leads to financial return. However, the only way financial return can be delivered is when all stakeholders are fully engaged in the adoption and implementation, if not, we will continue to see these solutions as optional add-ons that end up being more expensive to the overall trial. Sites need to be empowered to run trials through vendor and Sponsor support and patients need the option to have a more flexible trial schedule -making it more likely they remain engaged in the trial. Finally, vendors need to have transparent discussions with Sponsors on the design and application of innovative solutions to create the most value, without this we will never truly move the needle to deliver more efficient clinical trials.
Medical Research Network is an innovative market-leader of patient-centric and site-centric solutions for accelerated clinical trial delivery. Through our integrated in-home, at-site and digital trial solutions, we allow the medical research community to create more flexible, efficient and accessible clinical trials. We specialize in customizing the design of our solutions, optimizing trial protocols to increase recruitment and enrollment and improve engagement and retention. By engaging and empowering research sites and patients we bring more trials to more communities around the world.
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1: "Uptake! Where patient centricity meets financial return for DCT solutions", MRN, March 2021.2: "Uncovering key clinical trial features influencing recruitment", Journal of Clinical and Translational Sciences, September 2023
