Clinical Trial Patient Recruitment Case Studies: The Value of Saving Time

The majority of clinical trials don't reach their clinical trial patient recruitment targets on time. Meeting a deadline can feel like a lost cause, and beating one can seem impossible. Accelerating recruitment timelines can sound unrealistic, but it's possible – and worth striving for. Even saving just a few months can put your trial on track to improve costs, reduce the burden on research sites, and improve your reputation.

Below, we've outlined a few examples of how we've helped clients save time on recruitment – and the benefits their trials experienced after. Learn more by downloading our patient recruitment case studies.

Exceed your targets.

If you work with a patient recruitment company that fit your trial's needs, you may be able to not only meet your targets, but exceed them. In a severe asthma clinical trial Antidote worked on, the sponsor had been relying on site recruitment, and sites were falling short. The inclusion and exclusion criteria were quite specific, including exacerbations and a current common cold.

Antidote quickly put together specific outreach materials and activated our partner network to bring in 30 consented patients. We soon met our goal, and the client extended our contract – we then recruited an additional 26 patients who consented into the trial. By the end of our work with the client, they saved a total of six months of recruitment time compared with their previous trajectory by working with Antidote.

Help your reputation.

Sometimes, trial delays can negatively impact a sponsor's reputation. In one urgent project Antidote worked on, our client was a venture capital-backed company that had strict enrollment timelines and pressure from backers to meet, or beat, those timelines. Saving our client nearly three months of recruitment time was particularly meaningful here, as it helped a young company prove its worth to funders.

Give sites space to do what they do best.

Most clinical trials start recruitment efforts at the site level. That was the approach our client was taking for COPD trial, but three years in, they had failed to meet their goal of enrolling 1,048 COPD patients in three years, relying completely on site recruitment. In addition to not meeting targets, the research sites were also overwhelmed. When the client brought Antidote on, we created a pre-screener landing page for our client to ask qualifying questions up front, then further screened patients over the phone. Our digital targeting and partner relationships allowed us to reach our goal in just 9 months, three months ahead of schedule. In total, we saved our client more than 5 months of recruitment time, compared with their previous efforts.

Save on operational costs.

Even reducing patient recruitment time by just a few months can contribute to significant savings. By some estimations, the operational cost of running a trial for one day can cost $37,000 – a number that very quickly adds up. For one of our clients, we saved 1.5 months of recruitment time for a psoriasis, but were able to drive 45 randomizations in our timeline. Before Antidote was brought on, the trial was in danger of not hitting its targets. Our work staved off delays and allowing the sponsor to move closer to their goal of getting their treatment approved.

Interested in learning more about how precision recruitment can help you meet your goals? Download our case studies.