Let's talk medical research

What impact has COVID-19 had on our collective mental health? How has treatment been adapted to meet new needs? And what does this all mean for clinical trial participants?

Patient centricity is a phrase that generates a lot of buzz in the clinical research community — it typically refers to designing a treatment, clinical trial, or other health solution around patients’ needs and perspectives. Creating a patient-centric solution involves getting feedback from advocacy groups and patients themselves, and making decisions based on their voices. At the heart of it, ...

Hepatitis B (HBV) is one of the most serious liver infections in the world. Untreated hepatitis B can cause fibrosis, cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma, and end-stage liver disease. Doctors run several blood tests to see if the infection is harming your liver and to identify what stage of infection you are in. Here’s why one of those blood tests — the HBV DNA (viral load test) — matters and ...

When creating clinical trial advertising materials, it's important to craft outreach copy that connects with patients and care partners. But in order for your Institutional Review Board (IRB) to approve your materials, they must also adhere to guidelines set out by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Clinical trials can't move forward without volunteers, but sometimes, clinical trial volunteers have trouble getting to trial sites. This is especially true during a pandemic, where safety needs to be top of mind. One survey about clinical trial participation barriers revealed that the number one reason for declining to participate in a trial is the inconvenience of travel, cited by 42% of ...

The COVID-19 pandemic has left everyone to adapt to a state of uncertainty. The medical community has been laser-focused on finding vaccines and treatments for COVID-19. Because of this, more than 1,000 clinical trials for other conditions have been delayed, paused, or deprioritized. Clinical trials for respiratory indications, in particular, have been impacted, especially because many lung ...

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a disease of the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord). The cause of MS is not known, but scientists believe MS is triggered by some combination of these factors: immunologic, environmental, infectious, and genetic. If you live with MS and also have a family (or plan on starting one), you might be wondering if MS is passed down from generation to generation. We ...

COPD, short for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, is a chronic inflammatory lung disease that causes obstructed airflow from the lungs. More than 16 million Americans are living with COPD, and millions more have it but don’t know it. Signs of COPD include ongoing cough, shortness of breath, lots of mucus, and chest tightness — but everyone will experience this disease differently. 

The goal of any clinical trial should be to provide the best journey for the patient from start to finish. In order to achieve this, a sponsor will collaborate with an array of vendors to handle everything from pre-recruitment to site follow-up. Statistics on outsourcing vary, but largely tell the same story of an upward trend. Big pharma outsources around 40-45% of their activities to contract ...

The beginning of the year is an optimal time to review your clinical trial recruitment strategies and brainstorm new ones. The best clinical trial recruitment strategies start by focusing on the patient voice and perspective, and from there, it helps to get creative. We share three new research recruitment strategies to try this year.