PATIENT RECRUITMENT& RETENTION

Presented By:

• Prajakta Bhole

• Priyal Bhoyar

• Priyanka Jagtap

• Prasad Bagave

MSc.CRM PRIST(09-11)

CONTENTS

• INTRODUCTION

• BASIC PRINCIPLE

• METHODS

• STEPS IN RECRUITMENT PROCESS

• PROFESSIONAL APROACH

• ETHICAL ISSUES

• RETENTION OF STUDY SUBJECT

• RECENT ADVANCES

• CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION

• The process of new drug development is extremely time consuming and expensive.

• For a new molecule that is discovered it would take approximately 10-15yrs to reach the market at cost of $500-800 million.

• Patient recruitment and retention are considered the “key bottle-neck” of clinical trials.

• Patient recruitment if not adequately planned for can extend development time-lines by a number of years.

• Retention of patients throughout the life of a clinical trial is essential in order have complete data sets for analysis and subsequent filings .

 

• Lasagna’s law - states about the recruitment process from the initial stage upto the completion of the trial.

BASIC PRINCIPLES OF PATIENT RECRUITMENT

Why People Participate in Clinical Trials ?(Center Watch Survey,2000)

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Find Relief AdvScience

Earn ExtraMoney

Better Medical

Reasons

SOURCES OF PATIENT RECRUITMENT

• Government employees

• Private industry

• Medical referrals

• From clinical labs

• Blood banks

• Local advertisement

• Mass media

• Special populations

BARRIERS TO PARTICIPATE:

• Risk of side effects

• Concern about getting placebo

• Center too far away

• Unable to find a trial

• Not eligible

• Inconvenient time

• Lack of information

What MOTIVATES Patients to participate in clinical trial?

• Access to promising therapy.

• Access to greater medical expertise.

• Close individual attention/care.

• Emotional support.

• Altruism.

METHODS:

Investigator’s database• Overestimate the number of patients they would be able

to enroll.• Look at the number of subjects with general overall

diagnosis.

Internet• Increasingly used by patients to find health information.• Internet users may be better educated, higher household

incomes, and are more likely to complete a study.

Advertising • Name and address of the clinical investigator• The purpose of the study, and in summary eligibility

criteria• A straightforward and truthful description of the benefits

(payments or free treatment)• Location of the research and the person to contact for

further information

Direct mailing• Low cost approach: reaches a large numbers of

participant• E-mail lists (certain colleges, health center—broadcast

e-mails)

CLINICAL REFERRALS:

• Informing physicians directly via letter or phone

• Direct mailing to patient from clinic staff is possible if letter comes from clinic physician

• Includes recruitment material such as posters,flyers. • Have two options: 1. Opt-in 2. Opt-out

THE RECRUITMENT FUNNEL:

• Prior to starting a recruitment campaign, an investigator

need to project how many patients he would need to see.

• This lead to the development of

“Recruitment Funnel” on the basis

of which ultimate study performance

would be analyzed.

• The Recruitment Funnel is

also the basis for setting up

budgets for trial.

STEPS IN RECRUITMENT PROCESS:

• Identify- Protocol suitable patients are identified by mining the investigator’s database.

• Approach - once identified, are approached to participate in the trial.

• Inform Consent and Screen- Inform consent signed by patients undergo screening.

• Assess- Final assessment is made when a subject is suitable for a particular protocol.

• Enroll-Recruited- After the above 4 steps patient is enrolled/recruited into a study.

PROFESSIONAL APRROACH:• Planning: Recruitment should start with the initial stages of

protocol design so as to make it easy for investigators to recruit patients.

• Budgeting: Typically 10-15% of a study budget is allocated to recruitment.

• Monitoring & tracking: All recruitment activities should be monitored for their effectiveness.

• Metrics: The collection of metrics begins with the first phone call and entailed measuring and analyzing the various recruitment method.

• Training: Training of the staff is shown to boost morale and improve confidence leading in the end to better performance.

ETHICAL ISSUES:

• Confidentiality and privacy of personal health information- Any information by which a patient is identified is called identifying information.

Health information is kept confidential and is protected by federal law called HIPAA.

• Advertising for clinical trial patients – It is one of the way of recruiting protocol suitable patients in clinical trials.

Various media such as newspaper, radio, television etc. can be used.

should be approved by IRB/IEC before use.

• Undue influence – Offering excessive, unwarranted, inappropriate or improper compensation as an attraction to enroll or remain compliant in a clinical trial is called using undue influence.

To prevent undue influence compensation must be reasonable and must not influence a patient’s decision to enroll in a trial.

• Vulnerable population – Includes children , mentally disabled patients, prisoners sometimes elderly, students and employees of the investigator.

For these groups informed consent form may be signed by legally acceptable representative(LAR).

RETENTION OF STUDY SUBJECTS:

• Keeping subjects in study.

• Harder than recruiting patients is retaining them in study.

• High dropout rate would make a study statistically invalid.

• Drop-out rates for study are approximately 25%.The rate

increases to approximately 30% for phase 3 studies.

• Why do we care? Validity of result.

RETENTION IS CLOSELY RELATED TO SATISFACTION:

• Treating participants with respect.

• Communication between research staff.

• Communication about particular disease.

• Attention to factors such as transportation etc.

RECENT ADVANCES:

• Professional recruitment providers – they work with sponsors , CRO’s and SMO’s to improve recruitment.

• Increased use of market research – sponsors are turning towards market research strategies to increase patient recruitment.

• Informatics – is a database driven approach to find good potential subjects.

• Centralized recruiting – consist of one centralized location for all information regarding potential participants. It ensures that only suitable candidates are scheduled at various research sites.

• Development of metrics – The “Leaky pipe Analysis”.

CONCLUSION:

• As the number of clinical trials increases , the number of patients needed continues to increase.

• Traditional recruitment methods have failed to deliver recruitment goals within the specified timeframes, making sponsors look for newer innovation.

• Exploring the difficulties of recruitment and retention helps in growing, learning and improving on next project.

REFERENCES:

• Guide to clinical trial - by BERT SPILKER.• Basic principles of clinical research - by

S.K.Gupta.• A Guide to Patient recruitment & retention -

D.L.Anderson. • Centerwatch survey 2000.• www.pharmabiz.com