A short while ago, I presented a session on ‘Solving the Patient Recruitment Conundrum’ to the New Jersey Chapter of the Association of Clinical Research Professionals. 

In it, I outlined the way things typically work now – with a CRO identifying research sites that may have a relevant patient population to fit the criteria for the trial. 

Unfortunately, as we all know, on many occasions this simply results in the trial not recruiting in the desired timeline, so a Rescue approach is often adopted to get things back on track. 

I then outlined the measures that are often taken at that stage – including such things as expanding the number of research sites, bringing in a patient recruitment agency, reaching out to doctors and patient groups etc. 

One point I tried to get across was that all this additional activity could actually have been implemented much earlier – ideally even at the stage of trial design – thus avoiding any delays with recruitment in the first place.