When you’re a life sciences organization or digital health company looking to get your next clinical trial underway, you know just how critical it is to meet your patient enrollment targets. But you also likely know how challenging this can be. In fact, research shows that as many as 80% of all clinical trials are delayed due to recruitment problems.
Instead of struggling to source patients, you can use clinical trial recruitment companies like AutoCruitment. These companies specialize in finding the right patients quickly with a unique, technology-backed, full-service approach.
With so many factors to consider, it’s natural to ask: How do I choose the most effective clinical trial recruitment company for my particular needs?
Fortunately, this post will guide you through key factors to consider when determining the best clinical trial companies for patient recruitment.
Key Factors to Consider When Choosing a Clinical Trial Company
There are several important qualities to consider when choosing a clinical trial recruitment company to partner with.
Experience and Expertise
Certain patient recruitment solutions might seem to check all the boxes, but what is their track record like? To cut through the noise, first consider a company’s historical experience. For example, you can see featured case studies that highlight AutoCruitment’s success stories.
Additionally, assess the therapeutic areas they specialize in (such as psychology, women’s health, immunology, or rare diseases), and ensure your recruitment agency covers conditions relevant to your study (AutoCruitment’s services cover 120+ conditions).
Patient-Centric Approach
Clinical trial recruitment companies should simplify the recruitment process for your organization and your patients. For example, a clinical trial recruitment company can more effectively target and source the right patients with direct-to-patient digital advertising approaches. (Keep in mind that enrollment can be slow without these companies, with about 80% of trials experiencing delays.)
AutoCruitment’s patient-centric approach effectively targets and recruits patients while ensuring a seamless experience throughout the process. After identifying potential participants, our unique EMR Capture and Intelligence system simplifies the qualification process. It allows organizations to easily capture patient consent and HIPAA authorization, automatically collecting and aggregating medical records on their behalf. This system enhances data reliability and improves the patient experience by eliminating the need for patients to gather their own medical records.
Network and Reach
Did you know that clinical study sites typically only have access to about 10% of the patient population in their area? This highlights the importance of partnering with a recruitment company that can help reach the remaining 90% of patients who may qualify for the clinical trial.
It’s also important to consider a company’s geographic reach and ability to recruit patients from diverse backgrounds for your clinical trial opportunities.
Regulatory Compliance
Recruiting patients for clinical research requires strict adherence to regulatory guidelines and ethical standards.
AutoCruitment ensures that all regulatory requirements are adhered to, that all study materials and campaign assets are ethical, and that they comply with the FDA and IRB.
Innovative Recruitment Strategies
When patient recruitment companies innovate their digital recruitment strategies, they master patient engagement and more quickly qualify eligible participants.
These strategies can include direct-to-patient advertising, a social media recruitment strategy, and AI-powered technology. What’s more, when a company has a strong health network (through partnerships with healthcare providers and patient advocacy groups), it can reach even more enrolled patients.
Tips on Evaluating the Company’s Performance Metrics
Many clinical trial recruitment companies today can appear similar on the surface. Fortunately, you can use a few metrics to determine what a company’s performance is really like.
Recruitment Timelines
While recruitment timelines can vary depending on a wide variety of factors, your clinical trial recruitment company of choice should still be able to demonstrate a marked improvement in timelines. For example, on average, sponsors and CROs that work with AutoCruitment see a 97% increase in patient enrollments and save nine months on trial enrollment timelines.
Patient Retention Rates
Retaining patients for clinical trials can be challenging—on average, 25% of patients drop out after expressing their consent. However, when clinical trial recruitment companies carefully target and screen patients through a multi-step process (like AutoCruitment does), you’re likely to end up with both motivated and well-qualified trial participants, and this can lead to better patient retention rates.
What’s more, when patient advocates support patients at every step of the trial process—answering questions and providing guidance—patients maintain their interest and engagement with the study.
Questions Worth Asking Potential Clinical Trial Companies
Once you narrow your list of the top clinical trial recruitment companies and get to the vetting stage, consider asking about the following factors to gauge whether they fit your needs.
Experience and Specialization
It’s mission-critical that the clinical trial recruitment company you choose has relevant experience with similar trials or conditions/indications, demonstrating their history in recruiting relevant patients. This will also indicate that their patient network and connections will be useful for sourcing patients.
You can also inquire about their understanding of specific patient populations to determine their ability to identify the right patients for your trial.
Recruitment Strategies
Your partner clinical trial recruitment company should be transparent. What are their methods for finding and engaging patients, and how are they different from other companies?
Additionally, ask how they use advanced technology and data analytics to fuel their search. This can help ensure you partner with a company that uses today’s useful patient recruiting technology.
Performance Metrics
A clinical trial recruitment company with an excellent track record should be able to supply you with data on their past recruitment performance. To that end, ask for previous performance metrics and case studies, particularly when they have to do with conditions similar to the ones you’re studying.
Additionally, ask about patient retention strategies and success rates to understand the effectiveness of their patient placements.
Regulatory and Ethical Standards
Regulatory and ethical standards can’t be a backburner idea. Ask your potential clinical trial recruitment company how they ensure compliance with regulatory standards, ethical standards, and patient safety protocols.
Choose the Right Clinical Trial Recruitment Companies With Ease
Patient recruitment is an essential yet challenging part of the clinical trial process—but it doesn’t have to be. When you choose the right clinical trial recruitment companies for patient recruitment services, you can find qualified patients more quickly and prevent bottlenecks that can delay your trial.
Keep in mind the key factors to consider when choosing a company (such as experience, a patient-centric approach, and the company’s network), and be sure to thoroughly evaluate the company to make a fully informed decision.
Why AutoCruitment Is the Best Choice
AutoCruitment isn’t like other clinical trial recruitment companies. Thanks to our unique technology-backed, full-service approach, our process accelerates patient recruitment, clinical trials, and research studies.
By partnering with AutoCruitment, you can quickly target, recruit, and screen more suitable patients because we don’t wait for enrollment revenue to fund our direct-to-patient digital advertising.
We’re proud to work with clinical trial sponsors, CRO (contract research organizations) partners, and research sites worldwide to optimize in-person and virtual clinical trials while improving the overall patient experience.
Contact us today to find out more about partnering with AutoCruitment.