Meeting the Challenges of Patient Recruitment

Abstract

The recruitment rate of adult patients into clinical trials continues to be low. There are a number of barriers to recruitment and, for the most part, these can be classified as patient-, physician-, organisation- or protocolrelated. For practical reasons the process of trial recruitment can be divided into three steps: awareness of the trial, assessment of patient eligibility and the decision to participate. Two key strategies to improve patient recruitment are related to (i) knowledge, information and data management, and (ii) changing the behaviour of physicians and patients. Patient recruitment strategies cover individual services (e.g. call centre, web-based outreach campaigns) or integrated services (e.g. provided by recruitment companies). Unfortunately, there is only limited and inconclusive evidence from randomised or quasi-randomised trials comparing different recruitment strategies.