Recruitment

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

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.

Real-world data is increasingly used to optimize trial design, reduce recruitment burden, and support regulatory decisions, but adoption remains uneven due to challenges around data quality, integration, and internal alignment across functional areas.

In part 1 of this three-part series, behavioral science reveals how slow patient recruitment and enrollment challenges often stem from design and startup decisions made long before recruitment begins, but can be identified and resolved early when they still matter.

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.

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they represent an overlooked opportunity when recruitment systems are designed around their actual behavior rather than outdated assumptions about digital capability.

In this first part of a 2-part perspective, clinical trial recruitment failures are reframed as design outcomes, making the case for embedding enrollment feasibility into protocol governance from the start.

Miriam Dervan, founder & CEO of mdgroup, explains how treating patient experience as a strategic investment—rather than a secondary consideration—changes how sponsors, sites, and operational teams design and deliver clinical trials.

Explore how large-scale, de-identified real-world datasets enable more representative trial design, improve site selection, and support patient identification beyond the limits of traditional clinical study populations.

Learn why combining AI-enabled trial matching with transportation, lodging, and financial assistance is essential to turning trial eligibility into actual participation—and why matching alone is not enough.

Examine how the American Cancer Society’s national ACTS expansion is designed to simplify trial discovery, reduce logistical barriers, and help patients, caregivers, and providers navigate cancer clinical trials through a centralized support model.

Persistent recruitment delays, high dropout rates, and missed timelines continue to slow global clinical trials, while data show that sub-Saharan Africa offers a largely untapped opportunity with established research capacity, large patient pools, and strong enrollment and retention performance.

This pilot project evaluated whether targeted training could strengthen clinical research capacity at community cancer centers, improve readiness to conduct oncology trials, and support more inclusive patient enrollment by addressing barriers, building foundational skills, and increasing staff confidence in trial implementation.

Explore how AI can optimize study design, speed patient recruitment, and streamline operational workflows to shorten development timelines and enhance trial efficiency.

Explore methods to evaluate recruitment performance across multiple platforms, including engagement tracking, conversion analysis, and data-driven optimization for emerging digital spaces.

Examine real-world examples of patient engagement through less conventional channels and see how targeted campaigns can reach high-quality participants even in low-volume or emerging platforms.

Understand the regulatory and policy considerations for running clinical trial recruitment campaigns on nontraditional or entertainment-focused platforms, and how ongoing collaboration with ad teams ensures compliant, effective outreach.

Learn how demographic and behavioral insights inform platform-specific messaging, creative formats, and call-to-action strategies to engage patients and caregivers effectively across diverse digital channels.

Explore which factors—audience relevance, content fit, and engagement quality—determine the best use of platforms like TikTok, Reddit, and Spotify for targeted patient recruitment campaigns.

Learn how organizing data assets, activating nonresearch HCPs, and building referral pathways with compliant remuneration can convert identified patients into enrolled participants.

Discover why strategies must vary by indication and geography and how data-driven matching with supported referrals can outperform site expansion and generic advertising.

Understand how combining proprietary and real-world datasets with tokenization enables accurate protocol matching while maintaining privacy and compliance.

Learn how incorporating real-world data at study design can improve feasibility, reduce amendments, and align eligibility with findable patients across geographies.