Patient Participation

Pediatric trial participation shapes children's and caregivers' long-term psychological outcomes, yet protocol design often overlooks experience as a variable affecting recruitment, retention, and data integrity—a gap increasingly recognized by regulators and quality standards

Limited evidence surrounds direct-to-patient clinical trial site models, despite growing literature showing that decentralized approaches can improve patient access, enrollment performance, and operational efficiency while reducing participant burden.

Webinar Date/Time: Thu, May 28, 2026 1:00 PM EDT

Zentails announced the first dosage of Azenosertib administered in its phase III Aspenova trial to test azenosertib vs chemotherapy in Cyclin E1-positive platinum-resistant ovarian cancer.

Early integration of clinical, operational, and patient-level insights during trial development can help close the gap between evidence generation and commercial performance, improving alignment between product value and real-world adoption.

Payment experience—including timeliness, transparency, and consistency—is emerging as a key operational factor influencing site financial stability, working relationships with sponsors and CROs, and overall clinical trial execution.

Behavioral science reveals how recruitment failures, site disengagement, and underrepresentation in clinical trials are rooted in early design decisions, and what sponsors can do to address them before they become costly problems.

In this Q&A, Krishna Cheriath, VP and head of clinical research digital data and AI at Thermo Fisher Scientific, examines how AI is reshaping clinical operations—from case intake and trial design to site burden reduction and the emerging reality of agentic AI in the workforce.

Pharma modernization initiatives stall not from lack of ambition but from expanding governance layers that distance leadership from execution, slowing decision velocity and delaying the systems integration that drives competitive advantage.

The April issue of Applied Clinical Trials delves into the priorities driving patient engagement approaches today from the technology, regulatory, and site operations fronts.

In this video interview, Krishna Cheriath, vice president and head of clinical research digital data and AI at Thermo Fisher Scientific, argues that effective patient-centered AI must go beyond direct-to-patient tools to address social determinants of health and reduce the administrative burden on sites so that investigators can focus predominantly on the patient.

In part 2 of this three-part series, behavioral science and service design reveal how poor experiences with confusing information, unreliable technology, and inefficient processes drive site disengagement and patient dropout, and how measuring these experiences early enables practical, evidence-based solutions.

Vaccine developers can reduce participant burden and extend follow-up timelines by strategically combining traditional site visits with real-world data collection, but the choice depends on follow-up duration, data requirements, and the patient population being studied.

In this video interview, Del Smith, PhD, CEO and co-founder of Acclinate, examines the structural and relational barriers that keep underrepresented communities out of clinical trials and explains how authentic, sustained community engagement differs from traditional recruitment outreach.

In this Q&A, Mohammed Saeed, MD, PhD, chief medical officer at Solera Health, explores how wearable devices and continuous remote monitoring are reshaping clinical oversight, from early intervention to AI-driven pattern detection.

In this video interview, Mohammed Saeed, MD, PhD, chief medical officer of Solera Health, explains how continuous remote monitoring enables earlier detection of patient deterioration and allows care teams to intervene before conditions escalate to hospitalization.

In this video interview, Mohammed Saeed, MD, PhD, chief medical officer of Solera Health, discusses how wearable devices are giving clinicians a unique window into patient health outside the clinic and why that real-world visibility is becoming essential to modern care.

Analysis from the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development suggests that transparency in clinical evidence, community engagement, and more representative clinical trials are key factors associated with faster vaccine adoption and improved public trust.

In this video interview, Marc Buyse, ScD, founder and CEO of IDDI, makes the case for generalized pairwise comparisons and the win ratio as transformative approaches to trial analysis that incorporate multiple outcomes simultaneously and better reflect what matters most to patients.

Participant payment processes in clinical trials are evolving as sponsors and sites adopt automated technologies to improve payment speed, accuracy, transparency, and payment flexibility while reducing administrative burden on site staff and supporting participant engagement and retention.

Older adults generate disproportionately high engagement in digital trial recruitment, suggesting they represent an overlooked opportunity when recruitment systems are designed around their actual behavior rather than outdated assumptions about digital capability.

Rising development costs, low success rates, and increasing trial complexity are reshaping the clinical trial project manager role, demanding stronger digital fluency, adaptive leadership, and expanded stakeholder coordination to deliver studies efficiently.

Findings from the VA’s Diuretic Comparison Project show pragmatic trial designs can achieve strong provider participation when burden is minimized and patient care remains the primary focus.