Trial Results Summaries: Improving Patient Communications

Clinical trial sponsors continue to be faced with numerous challenges as they work to improve patient education and engagement throughout the clinical research process. These interactions have a direct impact on a trial participant’s perception of the care they are receiving in a clinical trial as well as their overall satisfaction with the experience.

Pressure to improve communications and to expand transparency efforts continues to come from trial participants, patient advocates, researchers and industry transparency advocates. As the complexity of clinical research continues to grow, so does the need to communicate more efficiently and effectively with trial participants and the general public.

This paper discusses the challenges inherent in the current practices of providing trial results summaries to trial participants. It presents an alternative approach to distributing trial results summaries that takes advantage of commonly used technologies to more quickly, efficiently and reliably provide trial results summaries to trial participants. The benefits of this approach to clinical trial sponsors, patients, and their relationship with each other are also discussed.