With the requirement of three separate 24-hour hospital visits, blood sampling and invasive muscle biopsy procedures – not to mention drawing from a limited pool of local volunteers – they knew recruitment would be a challenge. They recognized they needed a new recruitment angle from the start.

While Dr. Netting and her study group are all seasoned researchers, this trial posed some unique and new challenges. “There were a few hoops to jump through before we could recruit online because this was the first study the institute had done using online targeted recruiting, so we needed to speak to the human research ethics group,” she says. Despite all their effort, “recruitment was quite slow” and she needed an alternative method fast.

Early in 2020, Dr. Constable set out to study whether the retina is more or less sensitive to light in young children where there is some evidence of autism and further neurodevelopmental delay. As he prepared for his latest study, Dr. Constable had a very real problem: He had no participant database to pull potential study participants from and no patients of his own to invite to the trial.

When two researchers joined a respiratory study focusing on early COPD detection in 2017, they knew they’d have trouble with recruitment due to unusual participant eligibility requirements. But soon after experiencing some positive recruitment activity, they realized they had another issue: Keeping participants on through the end of the study.

Three researchers at Bayer Pharmaceuticals are conducting a randomized controlled trial to help sleep apnea patients manage their symptoms with a new medication. But their Phase 1 trial presented this trio more challenges than they’d bargained for. They faced tight timelines, a new enrollment site, unexpected response levels, and a global pandemic.

“Everything came to a screeching halt,” she recalls. Her entire research project and recruitment strategy evaporated overnight. Kavita realized that to continue her research, she had to take the whole project online. This was a daunting task. She needed to learn an entirely new set of skills and create custom processes for the study. Although she had no experience with any of it, she had to get it done in record time.

After a slow start to recruitment for her clinical trial, Dr. Tracy Prout turned to Trialfacts to help find participants for her psychotherapy intervention for children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder.

For one clinical research assistant the frustrations of clinical trial recruitment came quickly. See how a renewed recruitment plan gave him the numbers he needed for the Yale University study.

After hitting a wall in patient recruitment, the ARC team decided to go out on a limb by outsourcing recruitment efforts to Trialfacts. “We were a little concerned because it felt a little untested,” researchers said. Did their gamble pay off?

Paratus Clinical recognized the need for a high ROI as they began to invest in clinical trial patient recruitment. They needed to recruit as many participants as possible while using their sponsor’s funding wisely.

With the right clinical trial recruitment plan a study succeeds in narrowing 500 inquiries into highly qualified candidates a fraction of that size.

Even experts face clinical trial recruitment challenges. Read up on how Trialfacts tackles unfamiliar variables by recruiting for a pilot study as a first step.