Clinical trials are essential to advancing treatment options and helping scientists better understand conditions—however, their success hinges on effective patient recruitment, engagement, and retention.

Each day a trial is delayed, it postpones treatment availability and costs trial sponsors roughly $500,000 per day in lost revenue. Since every patient dropout adds to these costs, pharmaceutical companies and clinical research organizations (CROs) must focus on keeping patients engaged.

However the underlying causes of patients abandoning treatments remain addressable—studies reveal that it’s possible to curb spending via protocol design, patient recruitment, patient retention, and data management. To that end, CROs and sponsors can collaborate with clinical trial support services to ensure better patient enrollment and retention.

This article explores how clinical trial support services can help CROs achieve impactful results by implementing effective strategies for patient recruitment and retention in clinical trials.

What Is Clinical Trial Support?

Clinical trial support encompasses a range of services and resources to help CROs, researchers, and pharmaceutical companies conduct successful clinical trials. The support includes everything from trial design to recruiting participants.

The primary components that clinical trials utilize these services for include:

• Patient recruitment
• Patient retention
• Data management
• Site support

Some support services can also help with medical writing, compliance support, technology solutions, and logistics and supplies management.

Relieving some of the burden involved with these tasks allows CROs to focus on patient care and treatment delivery. At the same time, principal investigators help ensure efficiency by expanding access to high-quality and pre-qualified study participants.

Why Is Clinical Trial Support Essential for Patient Engagement?

Patient recruitment and retention usually present an uphill battle for CROs and sponsors during clinical trials. Up to 80% of trials fail to recruit patients on time, resulting in costly delays. Also, 11% of clinical studies fail to recruit a single patient, while dropout rates can be as high as 88% due to lack of follow-up and consent withdrawal.

Seeking the help of clinical trial support services can mitigate some of these hurdles. These services use customized and patient-centric recruitment processes to ensure patient engagement.

The process involves ongoing patient communication, support, and education to motivate participants and simplify complex protocols. They also focus on enhancing the overall experience and satisfaction through site management and dedicated specialists, allowing patients to navigate the study smoothly.

Types of Clinical Trial Support Services That Improve Patient Engagement

Enhancing patient engagement in clinical trials is essential to ensure retention and achieve successful trial outcomes. Consider the following clinical trial support services to improve patient engagement.

Patient Recruitment

Clinical trial support services leverage direct-to-patient recruitment strategies to recruit high-quality and motivated patients. This includes hyper-targeted digital campaigns like social media and digital advertising to attract patient volumes that trials need.

They also carry out IRB-approved patient screening to ensure only high-quality patients enter observational studies. This involves custom-built screeners and phone screening to find patients that align with a study’s criteria.

Patient Retention

Patient engagement doesn’t just stop at recruitment. Clinical trial support services offer ongoing education, communication, and support to keep patients engaged and motivated. The goal is to focus on the patient, build trust, and reduce barriers to participation.

Support providers help CROs and research sites adopt a patient-centric approach to enhance engagement and retention. This involves addressing concerns, listening to participants, meeting expectations, and implementing feedback to ensure a smooth experience.

Patient Monitoring and Data Collection

Clinical trial support services offer remote monitoring and real-time data tracking to ensure CROs and study sponsors can access preliminary data on human subjects. This also helps to keep participants safe and engaged throughout the trial lifecycle or observational study recorded.

They also help with patient consent, identity, and medical records collection and management. For instance, AutoCruitment offers EMR Capture & Intelligence to streamline and standardize data management for patients and research sites.

The Role of Technology in Enhancing Patient Engagement

Studies show that technological innovations enhance efficiency and productivity in clinical trials. Integrating technology in trials helps meet the evolving demands of clinical research and regulatory compliance. It also streamlines patient-facing processes like data collection, monitoring, and support.

For instance, software tools for telemedicine and virtual consultations can reduce regular site visits and eliminate the need for physical presence, which may inconvenience some patients. Moreover, remote trial management allows CROs to tap into geographically diverse populations to ensure a diverse participant pool.

Technologies like wearable devices and real-time tracking make trials more patient-centric while enhancing engagement and data collection. Mobile apps and devices record adverse events in a results database and remind participants to take medications. This level of interaction eases the experience for human participants.

How AutoCruitment’s Services Enhance Patient Engagement

With over ten years of experience, AutoCruitment has been the go-to clinical trial support service for pharmaceutical, biotech, and contract research organizations. They use direct-to-patient recruitment, technology, and engagement services to target, identify, and qualify patients for clinical trials involving different diseases, including blood cancers.

For instance, the company referred 417 qualified patients to sites for a schizophrenia clinical study. This accounted for 30% of the randomized participants, helping the study reduce the recruitment timeline by 32%.

To achieve such results for CROs and study sponsors, AutoCruitment uses a targeted,  multi-faceted approach to patient recruitment services that accelerates enrollment and qualification. They provide dedicated specialists to streamline site and patient engagement through customized screeners, follow-ups, optimized processes, and advanced technology.

Enhance Patient Engagement in Clinical Trials With AutoCruitment

The success of any clinical trial depends on attaining the required enrollment rates and ensuring patient participation and engagement. However, patient dropouts remain a big challenge, with up to 88% of participants quitting trials due to a lack of follow-ups, withdrawal of consent, and nonadherence to research study protocols.

Yet, hitting retention rates of 95%–100% is possible, and one way to achieve that is by using clinical trial support providers. These services optimize the patient enrollment processes to ensure seamless experiences. They also improve patient engagement through ongoing support, education, and follow-ups.

AutoCruitment uses a direct-to-patient approach to recruit high-quality patients for CROs and research sites. They provide dedicated specialists to streamline site and patient engagement and software solutions for complete visibility into the patient experience.

Contact AutoCruitment today to learn how they can help streamline clinical trial support and boost patient engagement.