Why use a clinical trial recruitment company?

Finding the right participants is essential to successful medical research, but unfortunately, many studies are unable to reach their targeted enrollment numbers with ease. Recruiting enough participants is often cited as one of the biggest clinical trial recruitment challenges, and many studies must be delayed or canceled due to a lack of randomizations.

However, this is not necessarily due to a lack of interest — many patients want to take part in clinical trials, but confusion about where to find them, how to enroll, and how to determine if a study is a good fit can make the process seem overwhelming. Fortunately, clinical trial recruitment companies can be a great asset for sponsors trying to bridge this gap.

Working with a clinical trial recruitment company can be a great way to boost a trial’s enrollment numbers and conduct successful research. Below, we will examine what a clinical trial recruitment company does, the benefit of their work, and how sponsors can pick the right company to work with to meet their needs.

What does a clinical trial recruitment company do?

The primary job of a clinical trial recruitment company is to find the right patients for a sponsor’s research opportunities. While this may sound straightforward, it’s the strategies they employ, particularly for challenging or specialized trials, that sets them apart. Some of the methods include combining in-depth patient research to develop data-driven outreach content or using ongoing campaign data to continually refine and optimize strategies. Clinical trial recruitment companies have to plan for success and, at the same time, have measures in place to circumvent any setbacks.

The benefits of using a clinical trial recruitment company

Because every clinical trial recruitment company will offer a different array of services and benefits, it is important to understand what makes each one stand out. Below are some key benefits that Antidote can speak to regarding the patient outreach services we provide.

Effective clinical trial recruitment strategies are employed from the beginning

Many sponsors are initially hesitant to work with a recruitment company due to budgetary restraints, but it can actually be a cost-saving option when thinking long-term. The costs of delaying or canceling a trial due to recruitment delays can be staggering — by working with an agency for outreach, it can circumvent these delays by employing recruitment strategies that are known to be effective from the very beginning. This results in a reduction of recruitment costs and can even allow studies to operate ahead of schedule in some cases, meaning medical advancements can happen faster.

Precision recruitment ensures participants reflect the real-world patient population

For new treatments and therapies to be deemed effective, they must be studied in a sample size of patients that are representative of the broader population — but unfortunately, achieving diversity in clinical trials continues to be a problem. However, with precision recruitment, it is possible to create outreach that’s targeted to the populations a trial is aiming to help, creating a more diverse pool of participants within the study. This is especially important for trials that disproportionately impact non-White communities, such as sickle-cell anemia, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

Patient and partner relationships can be leveraged to find high-quality leads

In addition to performing targeted outreach to contact new leads, patient recruitment companies can also leverage their relationship with partners as well as the patients in their database. Antidote has a network of over 400 partners that we can lean on to facilitate outreach to their communities during applicable recruitment campaigns. Additionally, our robust patient database is comprised of individuals that have shown an interest in research participation and have asked to be alerted when new trials are made available.

How to choose a clinical research recruitment agency

While there are clear benefits to working with a recruitment company for clinical trial outreach, not all players in the industry adhere to the same standards. It is important to understand how to evaluate the unique services and additional offerings each company provides to better determine which organizations might be a good fit for specific studies. Asking informed questions, such as those concerning condition specialties, risk share setup, additional site-level services, and more can help sponsors make sure that a company’s services can be a good fit for their needs. As always, if you’d like to learn more about how we do things at Antidote, just click the button below to get started!