Patient Recruitment Experts Liz Moench of MediciGlobal and Peter Dibiaso of Shire Pharmaceuticals Join Industry Colleagues in Webinar on Emerging Trends and Acceleration of Patient Recruitment for Global Clinical Trials

In a Web Conference on Patient Recruitment moderated by Peter Dibiaso, Senior Clinical Operations Director, Shire Pharmaceuticals together with Liz Moench President & CEO, of patient recruitment specialty firm; MediciGlobal, and joined by representatives from Inclinix and the Patient Recruiting Agency, the expert panel tackled the challenges of recruiting and retaining patients in clinical trials.

DATE: February 15, 2008—In a Future Pharma Web Conference industry experts discussed emerging trends in patient recruitment and how to optimize the global patient recruitment process.
Patient recruitment is considered by the pharmaceutical industry to be one of the biggest hold ups in the clinical-trial process. The costs associated with bringing a new medicine to market have increased 23 fold in the past 28 years. It is now estimated to cost about $1.25 billion to bring a new medicine through the drug development process. Drug development time has gone up from 11.6 years in the 1970s to 14.9 years in 2001, and while clinical trials take between 30 to 50% of the time spent in research and development, a third of this time (in clinical trials) is taken by delays in patient recruitment.
While the opportunities to participate in a clinical trial are numerous, patient volunteers on the other hand are few. Finding the right patient with the right inclusion criteria for a clinical trial is a highly complex process, and one that experts say often lacks direction and focus. Securing patients for clinical research participation is challenging without the right strategic marketing-communications approach.
Panelists addressed the following questions:

  1. Compare and contrast the potential models for a global recruitment campaign. Is it possible to engage a single vendor or is it more advantageous to utilize local (country) expertise and services?
  2. Increasingly CROs are developing internal core-competencies for subject recruitment and retention. Is it really necessary to engage a stand alone recruitment vendor?
  3. More vendors are utilizing population-based and demographic profiling via retrospective claims and other available data. What is the best way to assess and utilize that approach for clinical studies and does it really work? What about the global limitations to this approach?
  4. If there was one thing you could change about the sponsor-vendor relationship what would it be? Why?
  5. In your view describe what a “preferred vendor partnership” really looks like
  6. How has the introduction of new technologies impacted trial enrollment? i.e. new technologies to accelerate recruitment start up, new technologies to rapidly adapt recruitment-retention materials to different languages, cultures and populations, new technologies for outreach, new technologies for randomization/enrollment, new technologies for sites?
  7. What is the role of metrics and quantitative information in the analysis of clinical trial enrollment, retention and overall trial design, and planning?

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About MediciGlobal
MediciGlobal based in the U.S. and U.K., is a specialty patient recruitment - retention company, developing programmes for clinical trials of all sizes in countries around the globe. MediciGlobal's expertise in patient recruitment and retention ensures that biopharmaceutical and life sciences companies meet their clinical study timelines. MediciGlobal is one of few companies focused solely on patient recruitment and retention for nearly two decades. www.mediciglobal.com

For further information contact:
Ann Armillei
+1 484-674-6835
aarmillei@MediciGlobal.com