The ability of patient recruitment services to tailor strategies to the specific needs of their sponsor, while still keeping costs low and ROI high is essential. When taking on a new study, one of the most important things you have to consider is lowering the overall cost of your enrollment strategies by planning ahead and using your resources diligently.
1. Identify your ideal candidate
As you begin to look at the information provided by the clinical research site, it’s helpful to begin developing an idea of who exactly this study is looking for and how best you can target them. If you’re able to understand the demographic of your referrals, you’re more likely to reach enrollment goals quickly and at a lower cost, simply by going through the correct channels.
If your sponsor’s ideal participant is a perfectly healthy volunteer, it’s possible that spending resources reaching out to doctor’s offices and counting on physicians referrals isn’t the best option. Once you know what your ideal candidate looks like and where you’re likely to reach them -- provide your sponsors with a detailed pitch of your plan, demonstrating your forecasted ROI and justifying any expenditures.
2. Work with your simplest options first
If you already have a database full of patients, begin outreach to them at the onset of recruitment. Using a simple survey can help you to filter through your patients and find the ideal candidate you identified before. This is a low-cost, low-time option that carries the added bonus of working with patients you know are already interested in clinical research and will follow through with their commitments.
Here at Citruslabs, we work through our patient database at the start of new studies, meaning the bulk of our enrollments will often occur at very low costs.
3. Consider your Content and Communication
Our patient recruitment software touts access to prepared patients and consistent communication tools that help us add a “real human” feeling to our recruitment (meaning fewer outreach attempts get ignored as a result of seeming like spam.) In turn, we can keep our patient recruitment services cost effective and on track to meet enrollment deadlines.
The clearer your content and communication with potential referrals is, the easier it will be to quickly determine if someone is your “ideal candidate.” Content that explains the key points of a study and the basic enrollment criteria concisely can help people feel prepared to either pass up or join your study from the first contact, which goes a long way in avoiding wasting resources with continued outreach.
Want to Learn More?
In addition to keeping you up to date on all things clinical trials, we also act as a digital CRO with a specific focus on patient recruitment and retention. We believe that patient recruitment and study startup (especially study design and study material) are heavily intertwined. After all, study design can make or break clinical trials, and the patient-perspective should be considered when designing studies to ensure that patient targets are met not only on time, but also on budget.
For Citruslabs, patient recruitment starts with study design and ends with trial completion. We recruit patients through our network of health apps, which enables you to connect with thousands of patients in real time. The best part: these patients are already educated and prepared for the clinical trial process.