Using Analytics To Improve Clinical Trial Compliance And Retention

By Comprehend Systems

The success of every clinical trial hinges on recruiting and enrolling a statistically significant set of patients who meet specific enrollment criteria. The goal is to keep these people engaged through the end of the study to produce the quality data necessary to gain approval to market the drug or medical device being studied. However, patient recruitment and retention is widely recognized as the single biggest bottleneck of the clinical trials process. It is also one of the most costly. This problem is made even more difficult to manage when one considers the level of over-­‐recruitment clinical trial sponsors properly budget to address patient retention concerns. When determining the number of subjects required to meet a trial’s statistical endpoints, a trial manager over inflates the patient recruitment goal to account for a certain percentage that are expected to drop out. Using this strategy, research companies are, in effect, compounding the problem of missed patient recruitment goals by adding patients to the true enrollment requirement, all but ensuring delays in determining the outcomes of the trials.