Ophthalmic Clinical Trials: Addressing Barriers To Enrollment And Retention

Ophthalmic clinical trials fail at enrollment and retention more often than most sponsors expect, and the reason isn't patient disinterest. It's geography. When participants need repeated BCVA (best-corrected visual acuity), IOP (intraocular pressure), and OCT (optical coherence tomography) assessments at centralized sites, the travel burden compounds with every visit. Across the industry, up to 80% of studies miss initial recruitment targets, and ophthalmic trials carry extra risk because missed visits don't just reduce participant counts, they strip out critical endpoint data.

The standard site-based model asks patients to travel an average of 67 miles per visit. That's not a minor inconvenience for someone managing vision loss or mobility challenges. A point-of-need delivery approach, where certified assessors bring calibrated equipment to participants where they live, work, or congregate, cuts average travel to 12 miles and drops dropout rates from 30% to 9%. The data quality holds: 98% accuracy and 97% participant satisfaction across decentralized environments.

If your trial depends on repeated specialized imaging and you're still relying on centralized site access, the execution gap is likely already in your protocol. Download the full analysis to assess where your enrollment and retention strategy is most exposed.