Patient Recruitment for Clinical Drug Trials Key Terms

Understand the terminology of patient recruitment to make your clinical drug trials more effective

If you're new to the business of clinical drug trials, gaining a strong understanding of patient recruitment is key to ensuring a successful study. Patient recruitment is much more than a word-of-mouth process, and it requires careful planning. Understanding the key terms of patient recruitment for clinical drug trials will give you a better understanding of the scope of this important step. Additionally, knowing terms like "study branding" and "global patient recruitment" will help you choose providers to offer you the support you need for your specific drug trial.

 

Patient recruitment campaign

A patient recruitment campaign is a unified approach to recruitment, which generally incorporates media advertising. Marketing specialists develop these campaigns to help target the population that you want in your clinical drug trials.
Try: Read an article about how a successful patient recruitment campaign helped Praxis saved over a year’s worth of time in its clinical trials.

Study branding

Study branding is the process of creating a unique look and feel to your clinical trial's promotional and informational material. Creating an identifiable brand to express your study allows potential participants to understand not just what you're doing but the overall experience they are likely to have within the clinical trial.
Try: Healthcare Communications Group offers study branding for clinical drug trials, as well as a range of other recruitment services.

Global patient recruitment

With the focus on outsourcing and globalization in other industries, there's no reason why it shouldn't be incorporated into clinical drug trials. With global patient recruitment, you expand your base of potential participants to a global scale, which can potentially help you complete your study more quickly and at lower cost.
Try: Read about the basics of global patient recruitment at Xtalks.

Patient screening

Patient screening is the process by which you determine which potential participants are good fits for your study and is often completed in multiple tiers.
Try: Read about the three-layer process that TKL Research uses for patient screening.

Projected vs. actual recruitment rates

At the beginning of the clinical trial process, you establish the projected recruitment rate-the number of participants you expect. The actual recruitment rate reflects the number of viable participants that your patient recruitment strategy actually attracts.
Try: The Clinical Research Group addresses the difference between projected and actual recruitment rate and offers an overview of how to help ensure that the two match.

Participant retention

Though the actual practice of participant retention comes after you've recruited patients for your clinical drug trial, a plan for retention has to be in place from the beginning or you may lose those patients you've worked hard to recruit.
Try: TMS Health offers participant retention services that focus on following up with participants.

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