How CTMS & Healthcare Software Improve Patient Recruitment in Clinical Trials?
Clinical trials are the heart of new medical breakthroughs.
Take a step back in time to 1955 when Dr. Jonas Salk announced the first fight against polio. Or in the mid-70s when James Lind an expert physician conducted the first clinical trial to reveal that digestion of lemons and oranges was highly effective in combatting scurvy an illness caused by Vitamin C deficiency. These are just a minute fraction showcasing that clinical trials are essential in the medical field.
Sadly, clinical trials do not happen as often as they should. According to digital Harvard Business School, only about 5% of the population in America participate in medical research. A survey by the Clinical Leader also revealed that 50% of Americans do not know about the clinical trials.
Patient recruitment was traditionally done through standard media channels like print, radio, and TV and for one reason or another, it was not as successful. This can take a turn for the better thanks to the introduction of clinical trial management systems (CTMS) and healthcare software that are designed to improve recruitment. If you are wondering how this is even possible, read on to know how healthcare software and CTMS can increase participants in clinical trials.
Access to Patient Specific-Centralized Data
Many are times when research organizations will send out ambiguous messages about a trial to anyone who cares to listen. This can be a costly venture that will probably not yield desired results, because it is not everyone who may be interested in a particular trial.
Top Clinical Trials Management Software, however, avail helpful patient recruitment features that you can use to filter patient’s data simultaneously, basing this on a number of variables handpicked from multiple patient characteristics. The data offers insights into different areas like:
- Medical history of the patients.
- Demographics.
- Previous interventions, treatments, and medication consumption.
- Treatment progress and lab test results.
- Patient adherence levels.
- Billing information, etc.
This is beneficial because you will be in a better position to send patients’ comprehensive details about any relevant trials that they may be willing to participate in to reduce the number of delayed trials.
Web Recruitment Capabilities
Another aspect where CTMS and healthcare software can help increase the number of clinical trial participants is the fact that you can integrate the applications on your website. This makes it possible for patients to pre-screen themselves. This makes the entire process a lot easier allowing patients to come to you.
Additionally, with CTMS recruitment, you can email, or call the patients to facilitate them with all the details they need about the trial, specifically the ones that will not feature on advertisements. There are high chances that individuals will agree to participate in a trial when they have all the facts at hand. CTMS applications streamline the recruitment process helping things to fall in place much easier.
Fine-Tuning of Messages
Research bodies should consider the use of CTMS and healthcare software because these are knowledge empowering tools that help in the fine-tuning of information and messages. Patient Registry Database software allows you to know patients better, so that the creation of appropriate funnels to attract trial patients becomes seamless.
The software solutions enable experts to draw the potential image of the clients getting to know their needs, fears, behaviours, doubts, and lack of the solutions they seek. Armed with these details, experts can come up with better strategies to enrol and retain the human subjects needed for the trial.
Reduction of Recruitment Costs
Experts running a clinical trial will agree that the process of recruiting patients can be quite expensive. A huge chunk of the trial’s budget usually goes into the recruitment process. Using great CTMS can help bring down this cost significantly, because practitioners can effectively reach out to the patients they need without too many complications.
Chances of poor recruitment with Top Clinical Trials Management Software are also slashed seeing that researchers now have access to patient-centric information as a base for sending out their clinical trial messages. This also helps to save a lot of time because sponsors get to take advantage of a database that has been researched widely and contains contact information and selected names of patients who volunteer and match the eligibility criteria.
Conclusion
It is safe to say that the medical industry should look forward to more breakthroughs in the coming years. All this is thanks to technological advances that paves way to the improvement of healthcare software and CTMS that professionals can use to draw participants for successful clinical trials.
CTMS are also undergoing major advancements, where it is not possible for organizations to access a system that adapts to unique workflows and processes instead of forcing organizations to conform to the CTMS workflows. This enables better quality research, more collaborations, and less confusion with for all the parties involved allowing clinical research to evolve in the right direction.