“Here are 3 reasons why the clinical trial recruitment system is broken: 1. Lack of Awareness (Historically, only a very small segment of the population has been aware of the opportunities presented in clinical trials. As a result, trials often have difficulty recruiting a sufficient pool of qualified participants, which results in trial delays and additional recruiting costs); 2. Lack of Physician Involvement (There’s a huge lack of physician involvement in the clinical trial recruitment process, especially when it comes to community physicians making patients aware of opportunities for advanced care that could help them); 3. Inefficient Site-based Assessment (Direct-to-patient site recruitment may produce a lot of referrals, but in most cases, they end up not being qualified. The research site gets overwhelmed trying to assess a large pool of non-qualified participants; this can adversely affect trial timelines, costs and employee morale).

What’s the Fix?  Having greater physician involvement leverages the physician-patient relationship and helps build trial credibility. According to Research!America, 72% of Americans say they would likely participate in a clinical trial their doctors recommended. Patients who are referred by their physician are also more likely to enroll in a trial and remain engaged in the trial process and compliant with study protocols.   Leveraging technology that uses sophisticated filtering processes to match patients’ EHR data with clinical trial opportunities will begin to heal the broken processes of clinical trial recruitment over the next three to five years, according to Tom Dorsett, president and CEO of ePatientfinder, an EHR-centered, clinical trial solutions provider.”  – Erica Garvin for HitConsultant.net, excerpted and edited from her article, “3 Reasons Why The Clinical Trial Recruitment Model is Broken”, click here to read the article in its entirety. [end]