Editor's Note: Rahlyn Gossen is the founder and principal of Rebar Interactive, a digital patient engagement and recruitment company serving clinical trial sponsors and research sites. Prior to founding Rebar, Rahlyn was a clinical research coordinator. Her observations as a coordinator greatly influence her perspective on clinical trials as well as Rebar’s technology products and services, which aim to reduce inefficiency and improve the patient experience. Rahlyn frequently writes and speaks about clinical trial innovation and is on the editorial advisory board for Applied Clinical Trials.
Of the challenges in clinical research, participant enrollment in clinical trials remains to be one of the biggest.
Often, the discussion about enrollment delays focuses on supply challenges, such as how patients learn about clinical trials and what helps or hinders them from participating in clinical research. But understanding enrollment demand is equally important to this equation. In order to work toward an enrollment target, we must first know what target we’d like to hit. With this target in mind, we’re in a better position to figure out the steps needed to achieve it. And that brings us to this question: how many people are needed for currently enrolling research studies?
What did we learn? At the time of this blog post’s publication, the data show that:
- Enrollment demand is huge. We need many people to participate in clinical research—to the tune of over 57 million.
- Demand for people to enroll in studies is not distributed equally across diseases or phases. For example, nearly half of the enrollment need for cardiovascular disease is in Phase 4 studies.
Take a look to see for yourself! What do you find interesting? Any insights you’d like to share? Tell us what you think by @-mentioning us on Twitter.
