Key Performance Indicators are a vital part of most successful businesses, and clinical studies are no exception. In 2017, we looked at the basics of using KPIs in clinical trials, and the benefits they provide such as making it easier to establish benchmarks and allocate resources.
Today, we’ll be reviewing some of the most recent research into KPIs, and why having them at the heart of your business plan is key to strengthening your relationship with clinical trial sponsors, and giving your work a competitive advantage. Our review will build on a study by Hwang et al. which broke down the key components of clinical trial KPI’s into four main categories: financial, customer success, internal business processes, and learning and growth.
Financial
Some key factors identified by Hwang et al. Include the need for profitability improvement and productivity improvement. They posit several KPIs that you can incorporate to measure these, including The Approval rate of protocol, turnover intention, and rate of screening subjects.
These performance indicators align with the idea that costs are almost always linked to the efficiency of the recruitment method, meaning that a recruitment platform that seems to have a large upfront cost may end up paying dividends in the long run.
Customer Success
With the goals of improving your customer relationships and inducing customer participation, some performance indicators include markers of subject and guardian satisfaction, as well as drop out rates, and measuring the deviation from scheduled visits.
These are fairly common performance indicators for clinical trials, but they remain a key factor in running a successful trial. Ensuring satisfaction and increasing retention rates is a matter of knowing your audience, which can go a long way in preventing dropouts. Build a general profile for your patients based on nationwide trends, and be willing to go the extra mile to anticipate their needs, and fulfill them.
Internal Business Process
The overarching goal here is to improve performance quality, and research result quality. Some KPIs to focus on are examination performance rate and the rate of informed consent explanations.
This is also when KPI’s became an important marker for enrollment success and one that you can use as leverage in future conversations with sponsors. That is if you can show you’ve met enrollment goals on time or even earlier, you’re more likely to be chosen by sponsors first.
Learning and Growth
Focusing on strengthening CRC's ability, it’s important to remember the value that comes from indicators like hours of in-house service education participation. This essentially means, keep an eye on how much time and resources you’re investing into bettering the service you provide to patients and sponsors.
Keep track of the hours spent pursuing relevant education certifications and training, and use this a mark of growth for your site.
These KPI suggestions are certainly not comprehensive, but knowing their importance and breaking down your goals into tangible categories can help elevate your research, gain sponsors, and run more effective trials.
And, not that we are biased, but if we were to recommend anyone company for helping you recruit patients and live up to your KPI’s, it would have to be Citruslabs. Linked to our #1 health app in 17 countries, Mindmate, our patient recruitment dashboard directly connects researchers to over 3 million registered patients. Now, we would say that other models are available - but this would be a lie. In fact, our easy-to-use dashboard is the first-of-its-kind for the market; offering researchers a unique insight into patients’ wants and needs via industry-leading technology. The future of patient recruitment starts here.
Want 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 the 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.
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.