Whitepaper
Exploring the Importance of HCP-Based Clinical Trial Recruitment & Critical Success Factors
Summer 2022
SUMMARY
The Importance of HCP-Based Clinical Trial Recruitment & Critical Success Factors
Successfully recruiting patients to clinical trials comes with a host of challenges given their nuances and complexities. According to BioPharmaDive: 85% of all clinical trials fail to recruit enough patients, 80% are delayed due to recruitment-related problems, and patient dropout rates are poignantly high. The COVID-19 pandemic impacted clinical trials preventing patient monitoring from taking place and requiring new methods to be adopted. Ultimately, allowing remote monitoring and clinical trial participation presented an opportunity to provide patients and physicians with a better clinical trial experience.
When done properly, leveraging technology to decrease the number of site visits needed to participate in a trial would be “transformational,” but such advances must be executed in a truly patient-centric manner.
In this whitepaper, Underscore Marketing provides insights from their physician survey comparing the legacy approach to clinical trial recruitment with considerations of the new COVID-induced paradigm. Spoiler: healthcare professionals play a vital role in successful clinical trial recruitment, however, HCP communication is limited.
INSIGHTS
What Underscore's Physician-Led Data Uncovered
- Less than half of surveyed HCPs attested to getting clinical-trial-based information from email or medical associations.
- Clinical trial coordinator visits come in as the second most popular method for physicians to get educated about clinical trials, with ∼68% citing it as a source.
- Around 75% of HCPs learn about clinical trials from clinical trial site outreach vs. only around 42% getting information from online search results.
- Only ∼10% of physicians gain awareness of clinical trials from social media channels.
Given this insight, what is the most effective way to recruit patients from all backgrounds to participate in clinical trials? Underscore’s recommendation for optimal clinical trial recruitment is to focus on four key themes, which they delve into further within the paper; Location, HCP awareness, Automation-based clinical site outreach, Decentralization where feasible.