Clinical research sites continually strive to improve patient recruitment and engagement practices for clinical trials in an effort to provide sponsors with the critical data they need to bring new medications to market safely. In addition, it is an ongoing challenge to retain the number of patients needed to successfully complete and validate the integrity of a study.
As the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Commissioner of Food and Drugs, Scott Gottlieb, said when addressing barriers between clinical trials and clinical care, we “see great potential in using digital technologies to bring clinical trials to the patient, rather than always requiring the patient to travel to the investigator. This is an FDA priority.”
While the industry continues to search for new solutions that simplify the process and reduce the burden on patients, there is a gap between available solutions and the adoption of those solutions by sites. The relevant questions here are: how long it will take for the majority of sites to adopt new solutions, and what is holding them back?
To better understand the obstacles to industry-wide adoption, VirTrial, in collaboration with the Society for Clinical Research Sites (SCRS), surveyed clinical research site professionals (clinicians) worldwide to discover:
- The most prominent challenges in enrollment and retention when conducting trials
- Site awareness of decentralized clinical trials (DCTs)
- Alignment between the two preceding points, and
- The level of education available on telemedicine solutions.
