Many factors influence patient recruitment, such as the design and complexity of the trial, the availability and accessibility of the target population, the awareness and motivation of the potential participants, and the competition and collaboration among different stakeholders.
[3] Improving patient recruitment rates offers pharmaceutical and medical device companies one of the biggest opportunities to accelerate the pace of clinical trials – making it possible to reduce time to market.
The 2001 "Will & Why Survey" [4] of more than 5,000 people in the U.S. showed that 81 percent of the population was not aware of safeguards such as the Declaration of Helsinki, The Belmont Report, Institutional Review Boards, and the informed consent process.
Improving patient recruitment rates offers pharmaceutical and medical device companies one of the most significant opportunities to accelerate the pace of clinical trials and reduce time to market.
Some of these include increasing awareness and trust, simplifying and expanding eligibility criteria, reducing practical and ethical barriers, and harmonizing and streamlining regulatory and organizational processes.
[5][6][7] The discipline of patient recruitment was formed over three decades ago in the U.S. to meet the challenge of successful on-time enrollment.
The patient recruitment sector has experienced rapid growth in recent years, particularly in response to increasing number of global clinical trials.
Many companies have developed proprietary software to help make processes more efficient, and providers increasingly rely on the Internet not only for advertising and early screening, but also for tasks such as tracking data and measuring site performance.
There are many different recruitment methods, including mass media (i.e., television, radio and newspaper), physician referrals, press releases, fliers, random mailings, cold calls and the internet.
[15] Patients who are part of ethnic minority groups often have reservations about joining trials because they fear discrimination, especially if there is a history of unethical experimentation involving their population.
[19] As clinical trials begin to spread to developing countries, ethical concerns emerge regarding the validity of the informed consent process.
[21] A benefit of the globalization of clinical trials is that the recruitment process can be faster in some countries, making research more timely.