DPHARM 2024: Improving Patient Recruitment Outcomes

DPHARM's "Unlock the Power of the Patient for Better Patient Recruitment Outcomes" session

The first day of DPHARM in Philadelphia continued its momentum with a session on how to “Unlock the Power of the Patient for Better Patient Recruitment Outcomes,” featuring Jill Pellegrino, CEO of AutoCruitment, a company that offers direct-to-patient recruitment technology.

Pellegrino, who noted that she was “preaching to the choir” when it came to the challenges in clinical trials, led off the presentation with a few attention-grabbing stats regarding delays that directly impact sponsors and patients:

• Eighty percent of clinical trials face delays from enrollment
• The average delay in clinical trial completion is 12 months
• Fifty-five percent of clinical trials ended due to low accrual rate
• A total of 20,000 trials have been affected

“So why do we have this problem?” she asked the audience. “Well, the primary way that clinical trials are enrolled are through clinical trial sites, but we hear a lot now how clinical trial sites are overworked. They're under resourced, and it's pretty hard for them to keep up with the number of trials that are ongoing, so the results from sites are unreliable and unpredictable.”

Being that 30% of sites fail to enroll even a single patient, she also stressed the importance of not solely depending on sites to boost enrollment numbers. Instead, she recommended having a site database, utilizing physician referrals, and electronic medical record (EMR) mining. With 10% of the population being accessible via “site-driven strategies,” this signifies that the remaining 90% of the patient population is still out of reach.

So, given the session title, how can we unlock the power of the patient exactly? According to Pellegrino, it comes down to three concepts:

1. Unlocking access by accessing the untapped patient population at scale
2. Unlocking insights with the help of screening and the restructuring of AI-powered EMR data, which includes a customized online screener, clinical phone screening, and EMR Capture & Intelligence, where AutoCruitment captures the patient's medical records after receiving his or her consent, and then the company uses the technology to review those records to see if they're eligible for the trials.
3. Unlocking efficiency by supporting and optimizing both the patient and site experience

Perhaps the formula to success revolves around heightened engagement services, which can enhance patient engagement, increase time to enrollment, and boost site efficiency. Pellegrino summarized AutoCruitment’s role in these efforts by laying three key areas in driving patients to trials.

“Our targeted direct-to-patient recruitment allows us to unlock access and get access to a large population, or enhanced qualification services, which ensures that we're finding the most qualified patients for the protocol, and then our dedicated engagement support ensures that we're optimizing those funnels and making sure that the patient is turned into randomized patients,” she concluded.

Reference

Pellegrino J. Unlock the Power of the Patient for Better Patient Recruitment Outcomes. September 17, 2024. DPHARM 2024. Philadelphia.