Considerations For Improving Patient Recruitment Into Clinical Trials

Imagine yourself to be a Fund Manager or Angel Investor considering an investment into the pharma or biotech industry and you become aware of the following statistics about recruitment of patients into clinical trials1:

• Nearly 80% of all clinical studies fail to finish on time, and 20% of those are delayed for six months or more
• 85% of clinical trials fail to retain enough patients
• The average dropout rate across all clinical trials is around 30%
• Over two-thirds of sites fail to meet original patient enrollment for a given trial
• Up to 50% of sites enroll one or no patients in their studies

Clinical trials account for nearly 40% of the US pharma research budget and total around $7B per year and the estimated cost of patient recruitment is 40% of the total budget, or $1.89B. Thus, patient recruitment is the very weak link in the development pipeline and one that an experienced investor would want to know what steps are being taken to address the issue and thus accelerate the time to market and thus profitability.