What's The Role Of Patient Recruitment Experts In Clinical Trial Recruitment?

By Author: William Johanna
Total Articles: 9
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Every year, pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology firms, universities, hospitals, Contract Research Organizations (CROs) and individual researchers conduct dozens of clinical studies. Clinical trials are required before new medicines or medical gadgets are deemed effective for their intended purposes. Clinical research also adds to existing medical knowledge.

Different approaches are used in each study but all these studies have one thing in common - all of them ultimately involve human subjects. In the course of developing a new drug, medical device or clinical procedure intended for human beings use, it reaches a point when human subjects must be involved in the process so as to ascertain the efficacy of the new drug, appliance or procedure. Official approval is only given after satisfactory human trials have been carried out.

Finding willing participants is the bane of most clinical trials and is the reason why many researchers are now turning to clinical trial recruitment firms for assistance. Many researchers fail to appreciate the challenges that come with recruiting patients during initial planning for ...
... their clinical studies. More attention is paid to other activities related to the trial such as budgeting, site selection and data monitoring that are deemed more important with the assumption that patient recruitment will be done with little effort upon reaching the patients enrollment stage. Provided that the outcome of any trial depends on successfully identifying, recruiting and enrolling patients, it is perfectly clear that this aspect of clinical studies should be adequately focused on too.

Researchers are increasingly turning to professional patient enrollment companies to handle recruitments on their behalf and for good reasons. To start with, this helps them to save much time that they would otherwise spend scouting for participants. In clinical trials the old adage "time is money" is particularly true; undue delays cost pharmaceutical companies millions of dollars. The Pharmaceutical Research and Development Compendium observes that a delay in putting a drug in the market costs a company roughly $8 million every day and that about three-quarters of all trials are delayed because of difficulties with enrollment of patients. It is no surprise therefore that many companies are seeking professional help in this important area.

For a trial to be scientifically valid it should include a statistically acceptable sample size that should also be well randomized to avoid any inherent biases. Unscientific sample selection is another issue, apart from recruitment, that bothers many researchers. On the basis of questionable recruitment and lack of randomization, the results of a study can be nullified to the detriment of a researcher's effort. To avoid such negative implications, many researchers are now relying on patient recruitment experts.

Entrusting clinical trial recruitment to professionals avails to researchers the additional benefits that accrue from a centralized and focused patients recruiting and enrolling effort. For instance, the recruiter will go out of its way to ensure that only the most suitable patients are recruited for the study. The recruiter will also carry out all the activities that are necessary for ensuring successful recruitment and enrolling of patients such as media campaigns, advertising, physician referral programs, advocacy, and other Direct to Consumer activities, all of which will deliver the requisite effective clinical trial enrollment.

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