Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/7d8fd8/keywordpharma_conf) has announced the addition of the “KeywordPharma Conference Insights – Accelerating Patient Recruitment in Clinical Trials” report to their offering.
The 2nd Annual Conference on Accelerating Patient Recruitment in Clinical Trials, held in London 27-28 March 2006 and organised by SMi, brought together speakers and delegates from a wide range of pharmaceutical and medical device companies and Contract Research Organisations (CROs). Many of the speakers enjoy direct responsibilities for ensuring patient studies are optimised within their companies, and that they run to budget and to agreed timelines. Over the course of the conference it emerged that, although speakers often shared similar patient recruitment problems, the approaches they take to address these issues now vary considerably between companies, as do their relative success rates. Some companies have replaced inefficient large advertising campaigns (that seldom produced sufficient patients anyway) with streamlined evidence-based patient recruitment methodologies that are adaptively agile to the particular requirements of each individual trial. Further, it became clear that, to assist both patient recruitment and investigator support and morale, ‘best-practice’ companies have been able to identify optimum managerial structures for handling their multinational clinical trials across large numbers of investigator sites across many countries. They have also been able to identify the factors that predispose to higher levels of patient recruitment and retention in different countries, and the most cost-effective solutions. Several companies shared how they benefit by the use of a range of support tools (patient databases, metrics and benchmarking, and cost-effectiveness analyses) to make better choices about their patient recruitment strategies (and their selection of investigator site where this impinges on rates of recruitment). Subsequently, some have now found out what works well and what doesn’t. The audience seemed fascinated to learn by these experiences.
The issue of public and patient perceptions of clinical trials was at the forefront of many of the presentations, since a very high-profile incident during a drug trial, news of which immediately reached television and newspaper audiences globally, had occurred only days before in a nearby hospital. Everyone was aware that this crucially important new public image onslaught poignantly affects the livelihoods of almost all the speakers and delegates in the auditorium. This is because, as industry patient recruitment specialists, and as individuals, their future success depends on their own abilities to try to regain supportive perceptions of clinical trials within the general public. They are also aware that they now need to come up with the most effective reasoning for their patients to ensure they remain enrolled in existing trials, and to find the best ways to persuade patients to enrol in adequate numbers in all of their new prospective studies.
Executive Summary:
All pharmaceutical companies want to find cost savings. The industry conducts large numbers of clinical trials each year. Regulatory requirements, as well as other scientific and marketing needs, mean that many of these studies continue to need ever-larger numbers of patients. The cost of running trials is now approaching 30% of pharmaceutical companies’ entire drug development budgets. However, 75% of patient studies fail to make their timelines, often causing expensive delays in regulatory approval and market launch. Slow patient recruitment represents a major reason for this, as does poor retention of patients within ongoing clinical trials. Close scrutiny of, and adherence to, a variety of factors that promote timely patient recruitment, however, mean that pharmaceutical companies have tangible mechanisms that can substantially enhance their profitability. The 2nd Annual Conference on Accelerating Patient Recruitment in Clinical Trials, held in London 27-28 March 2006, organised by SMi, discussed a diverse range of approaches now used by some companies and their Contract Research Organisations to adhere to timelines, to shorten them, and to try to identify recently evolving best practices.
This Conference Insights review provides analysis of the pertinent issues raised in selected presentations made at this event, discussing proven strategies to maximise patient recruitment, tools to assist the process, investigator-site selection and public perceptions of clinical trials. It makes clear why the old method of opportunism in patient recruitment is not effective, and looks at why companies are starting to abandon expensive advertising campaigns in favour of evidence-based patient recruitment strategies.
From a business point of view, optimising patient recruitment and retention, with the aim of getting new products on the market as soon as possible, now represents an important, achievable goal for all pharmaceutical companies.
Key Topics Covered:
-2nd Annual Conference on Accelerating Patient Recruitment in Clinical Trials – Programme
-Introduction
-About the author
-Background
-The importance of influencing public and patient perceptions of clinical trials on global and local levels
-Strategies for accelerating patient recruitment
-Strategies for increasing patient retention
-Conclusions
-References
-Further reading
For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/7d8fd8/keywordpharma_conf
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