The Industry Shift in Clinical Research
Patient recruitment has been a process often delegated to the CRO or research sites but the times are changing, and now there are more studies. Correction. More complex studies. Inclusion and exclusion criteria are far more complicated than how they used to be in the past. This led to an industry shift, and now a site has to look for patients outside of their facilities, databases, and database service providers.
Because of this industry shift, as well as the fact that sponsors are aiming to get their drugs approved without any delays, many sites have to be creative in their approaches. The picture that we see right now is that you cannot be successful unless the sponsor sees that you have a large pool of patients available. So, being able to enroll patients quickly and without any delays is becoming a normal expectation in the clinical research industry.
In fact, this expectation of having tons of potential patients available is why all sites need to adopt faster methods of referrals and recruitment.
Doctor referrals and TV ads are not enough anymore. Sites have to look at newer methods and ditch the traditional ways of recruitment from the past: TV, newspaper, and Radio ads.
These newer recruitment methods focus on digital marketing. Keeping up and staying up-to-date is crucial here! With the help of these new methods of recruitment, we manage to collect more referrals in half the time required in the past.
Essentially, PIs and sites have to do more of their own referral generation to stay competitive.