Additionally, physicians can be reluctant about recommending patients for a clinical trial. LaRocque says in surveying physicians, one concern in particular came up. “Will they get their patient back or do they lose the patient to the trial? That was an interesting perception that came up through some of the analytics that we were doing.”

Brian Weiss, CEO of Carebox Healthcare Solutions, says clinical trial sponsors need to remember that within each population segment, there are specific things that are different from one group to another, and do not fall into a generic kind of diversity.

Carebox has an engagement platform that is used by leading pharma companies, research sites, and patient advocacy groups to connect patients to specific clinical trials. “When we talk about communication [for clinical trial recruitment], there’s multiple audiences,” Weiss says. “When you have this very site-centric view, as opposed to patient-centric view – the hospital, the research center that runs a trial – then you communicate a certain way. Your job as a trial sponsor is to make sure that the trial site understands the requirements and the protocol and what they need to do and who an eligible patient is. That’s a very different agenda from a communication standpoint, so then how do we reach the broadest population of patients possible?”

Traditionally, clinical trials have been very focused on site selection, Weiss says, “If I have a trial in cancer, I’m going to look for the top cancer research centers, and I want them to be my study centers for my trial. That might not be the right way to reach a very diverse population.”

To reach the types of patients they need, trial sponsors need to take a different approach to patient recruitment. “We’re going to do things to reach the audience that we’re trying to target in terms of patients directly, as opposed to indirectly through hospitals or through certain kinds of centers,” Weiss says.

Diversity, according to Weiss, “is really just one of a couple of key trends, which go to that same message of reach[ing] more people directly.” For certain trials that need patients with a specific genetic makeup, “That’s not diversity in the sense that we think about it socially or culturally, but that certainly places challenges on reaching the right population for a trial,” he says.

Patients want to be more involved in their own care, and that includes clinical trials.

“Maybe 50 years ago, being in a clinical trial [meant] your doctor told you, ‘You’re going to be in a clinical trial,’ but it doesn’t work that way anymore,” Weiss says. “We all come with our Dr. Google expertise and we want to be owners of our care plans, we want to be treated as educated healthcare consumers.”

And the use of decentralized trials, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, showed the industry that trials did not have to be done in a hospital, forcing people to travel several times a week. “Can we do more at home? Can we do more at a local pharmacy, can we do more in other kinds of locations?” Weiss adds.

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