It’s no secret that patient engagement leads to more effective clinical trials, but building engagement can sometimes be an elusive beast. Some challenges facing patient engagement today include fear, misinformation, and disdain towards the perceived financial commitment.
Patients may fear bad outcomes for newer clinical trials, particularly if the patient belongs to a minority group with historically poor treatment in clinical trials. Or, patients may simply be under the impression that participating in a clinical trial is lending themselves to be treated as “human guinea pigs,” despite the evidence against this misconception.
Finally, patients may simply refrain from participating in clinical research because they don’t feel they have the finances to support it. However, volunteers for medical trials rarely pay costs related to participation. The two costs associated with clinical trials are research costs and patient care costs. Research costs are covered by the sponsor, and patient care costs are generally minimized to encourage participation and are often covered by insurance providers.
It is on clinical researchers to spread awareness, inform patients, and create trust through transparency so that misconceptions about clinical trials are being erased.
How Citruslabs can help
Citruslabs addresses these common fears and misconceptions through an inclusive, accessible approach to clinical trials. We work with sophisticated software and our health app network to match the right patients to the appropriate clinical trials through analysis of their medical information, demographics, and online and mobile behavior in order to recruit patients that are suitable for the clinical researcher’s objectives, therefore targeting participants who will derive the most mutual benefit from the trial.
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Beyond this, Citrus, our fully integrated patient recruitment and retention platform, uses a secure two-way communication system linked to the patient portal and the researchers' dashboard to ensure that patients are able to safely communicate with their clinical trial staff as well as the medical team with confidence. These strategies boost productivity and encourage deeper patient engagement-- all while acting in transparency to dispel any fears or doubts patients may present.
Need more Information?
Citrus is a fully integrated recruitment and retention software that fits any clinical trial and simplifies the implementation of patient engagement in your clinical trial. Whether you are already working with CTMS systems or not, Citrus is the perfect add-on to make patient interaction effective.
Since 2015, our team has been hard at work raising awareness of clinical trials across the globe. A Forbes ‘30 Under 30’ company and a graduate of the renowned Techstar program in New York, Citruslabs is at the forefront of patient recruitment and retention technologies. With over 3 million patients now recorded on our databases, our patient recruitment dashboard is fast becoming the most efficient method of trial recruitment.
Now a #1 health app in 17 countries, our Mindmate app is helping to revolutionize the way we think about healthcare. Mindmate “[takes] senior care into the digital age” (Forbes, 2018) by providing people with cognitive decline the essential tools to help them rebuild and maintain strong mental health. Trusted by millions of users, our health community continues to grow as the content available expands to the needs of individuals today.
With more than 200 research sites now using the Citrus platform to screen thousands of patients every month, researchers are now well on their way to finding new treatments for hundreds of different health conditions - something that just would not be possible without a technological solution. Make sure that your clinical trial is in the lucky 12% and turn that luck into guaranteed results with Citrus.
Still a little unsure? Check out what our customers have to say about us here.
And If you’d like to know more about how Citruslabs can help you recruit more effectively, get in touch with our team here.