Patient recruitment is both critical to ensure qualified enrollment in clinical trials and a huge investment for companies. Fully one-quarter of the cost of a clinical trial is assigned to patient recruitment. With so much invested in recruitment, patient retention is critical to managing costs and obtaining the data needed for regulatory submission.

The failure to retain qualified patients not only impacts the ability to run the trial, it can also delay the study and cost the site time, money and resources.

Meeting patient expectations during clinical trials

According to one study, more than double the percentage of patients who dropped out of a clinical trial reported that it didn’t meet their expectations compared to those who completed it.

So, what do patients expect providers to do for them while participating in clinical trials?

Send reminders for upcoming visits.
Explain the importance of their participation.
Provide a comfortable and patient-friendly environment.
Accomodate their schedule as much as possible.
Promptly respond to inquiries.
Show appreciation and recognition for their participation.

This high touch approach to clinical trials has been shown to dramatically improve retention and create a positive patient experience. However, high touch often translates to high cost, and with the average cost of phase 1, 2 and 3 clinical trials across therapeutic areas landing around $4, $13 and $20 million respectively, organizations want to reduce costs, not add to them. It’s no wonder depending on the trial phase, on average 30% of patients enrolled at the beginning of a study drop out before completing the trial.

Virtual agents can help solve this challenge.

Thirty percent of patients eventually drop out of clinical trials before they are completed. Moore TJ, Zhang H, Anderson G, Alexander GC, Estimated Costs of Pivotal Trials for Novel Therapeutic Agents Approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, 2016-2016, JAMA Internal Medicine, Nov. 2019.

By engaging with patients on a regular basis throughout the trial, virtual agents can alleviate the time and resource constraints that make regular and proactive communication challenging.

Improve clinical trial retention with virtual agents

By engaging with patients on a regular basis throughout the trial, virtual agents can alleviate the time and resource constraints that make regular and proactive communication challenging. As a result, contract research organizations (CROs) and retention vendors can cost effectively perform the activities that help to meet patient expectations and increase patient retention, including:

Proactively engaging patients through the study process to ease concerns
Performing pre- and post-appointment surveys
Providing appointment reminders
Ensuring that patients have the support they need to complete required tasks, such as completing diary entries
Quick, easy and reliable answers to questions

By leveraging Gridspace Grace, the most advanced, natural-sounding virtual agent, CROs and recruitment vendors have a convenient, easy and thorough way to engage with patients throughout the enrollment process. With our task-specific, next-generation conversational voice, patients have 24/7 access to a bot that can handle patient interactions consistently and compliantly in a natural and friendly manner, and also help patients stay on track.

Explore how Grace can help CROs and recruitment vendors improve clinical trial retention.

The failure to retain qualified patients not only impacts the ability to run the trial, it can also delay the study and cost the site time, money and resources.