Challenge: Site Participation in Clinical Trials
In my capacity as VP of Life Sciences Product Marketing at IntraLinks, I attended the second annual "Patient Recruitment in Clinical Trials" seminar hosted by the Cambridge Healthtech Institute in May, and in a presentation by Brian York, Director, Feasibility and Patient Recruitment at Amgen, he shared that 87% of physicians are not involved in clinical trials. The top reason cited for this (38%) was "lack of opportunity." As a company that has been serving the Life Sciences industry to support clinical study communication for over nine years, we know that the number of clinical trials has been on the rise for the past several years. This point was also illustrated in a graph provided in Mr. York's presentation from the seminar, showing a 42% increase in clinical studies from 1997 to 2006, yet only a 30% increase in new investigators within the same time frame:
Source: CenterWatch, State of the Clinical Trials Industry, 2008
Presented by: Brian York, Director, Feasibility and Patient Recruitment at Amgen
It is interesting that this data indicates greater opportunity for physicians to participate in studies but they are citing lack of opportunity as the inhibitor. In addition, in a survey we conducted with 252 investigative sites in March 2009, 89.7% of respondents indicated that the way they find out about upcoming clinical research studies is through being contacted by sponsors they've worked with in the past. So, one would conclude that sites who are already involved in clinical trials, continue to be involved in clinical trials. But how do you get to those sites that have not participated in a study before, who may want to participate, and might be a great candidate for the study? Where does the burden lie - do sponsors need to do a better job of promoting new studies to investigators, or do investigators need to do a better job of promoting their interest in studies?