Where are the subjects for your clinical trials?
By IntrinsiQ Specialty Solutions
Patient recruitment for clinical trials has never been easy. Geography, inclusion/exclusion criteria, and study design have all played a part in how successful sponsors might be with recruiting for their trials.
Recruitment challenges are heightened in this post-pandemic environment. Study sites which may have been successful in past trials may be dealing with their own internal issues – the patients they might typically recruit may be in later stages of a disease as care, and access to care, was delayed. Some patients may have more difficulty with transportation and attending multiple clinic visits, especially public transportation which has faced serious restrictions during the pandemic. Other factors like the changing social media algorithms make it more difficult, and potentially not as effective, for sites to recruit via their platforms.
And protocols may be more complex – as some sponsors are trying to increase the number of endpoints within a single trial design. Subjects may fail eligibility screening as the trial design limits the type of subjects available for recruitment.
In community specialty practices, oncology patient volume was not as impacted as other specialties, and volumes are back to pre-pandemic levels.1
“Oncology practices have fared okay with revenue at this point versus a year ago. The financial impact was somewhat less because current patients were still coming in for treatments. The real struggle was with new patients. If someone has a suspicious lump, they get it tested to see if it’s cancerous. Those initial tests and appointments with the surgeon were delayed during the height of the pandemic. JAMA research found a 46.4 percent decrease in new cancer diagnoses at the height of the pandemic lockdown (March 1-April 18, 2020). So, people saw the doctor later when the stage of their disease was further along,“ noted Cass Schaedig, Vice President, InfoDive, IntrinsiQ Specialty Solutions in a roundtable discussion discussing community practices’ health in a post pandemic future.
Yet how do you find those specific subjects for your clinical trial?
IntrinsiQ Specialty Solutions is utilizing data by carefully de-identifying private health information to gain insight into different patient types and their providers at the time of care. With over 20+ million patient journeys mapped with data collected from specialty practices2 and over 65% of community oncology practices in the U.S.3, the tools can get specific information on which practices are treating patients with specific disease states, biomarkers and demographics to meet the study criteria. The multi-tiered process of validation will help to identify those potential subjects in a more timely and efficient fashion.
To learn more about how IntrinsiQ Specialty Solutions can help find those specific patient populations, and partner to learn the attributes and inclusion criteria most important to your protocol, contact advanceIQ@intrinsiq.com.