Meeting Patients Where They Are: Why Patient-Centric Trials Mean Assessing Your Protocol In New Ways

By Faith Holmes, M.D. – Medical Director, Vice President of Medical Affairs, Elligo Health Research

Many clinical trials struggle with patient enrollment and retention. To simplify enrollment challenges and reduce incidences of dropout, investigators, sponsors, and contract research organizations (CROs) have shifted their trial design and execution toward patient centricity, seeking to keep the patient’s needs, concerns, and perspectives front of mind throughout the entire clinical trial process.

The wider industry’s adoption and implementation of a patient-centric approach to clinical research — central to Elligo’s mission of providing that research as a care option to all patient populations — is a work in progress. But the community practice physicians who function as the Elligo network’s principal investigators during clinical studies know nothing but a patient-centric approach, as they care for patients on a daily basis. That existing physician-patient relationship allows the physician unique insight into patient-centric approach to study design.

If sponsors and CROs truly seek to build patient-centric protocols to improve clinical trial enrollment, retention, and the overall success of clinical research going forward, we must acknowledge the steps they must take. Here we review how to create effective solutions actualizing patient-centric clinical studies.