Abstract:

Clinical trials are a key research tool for advancing medical knowledge and patient care. They ultimately gear towards ameliorating and improving diagnosis and treatment of all diseases by introducing novel interventions and therapies. Essential to conducting a clinical trial is randomizing the proper study population through recruiting eligible participants based on inclusion and exclusion criteria, and ensuring study completion and adherence of study patient participation. Although these may seem simplistic, patient recruitment, retention and adherence are the most difficult challenges in clinical trials. While patient recruitment is one of the key elements to study completion, over 80% of clinical trials shockingly do not finish on time. Devising a potential strategy is vital in overcoming recruitment barriers; however, it is very costly and cumbersome. Lambda Health, LLC is in the process of creating a clinical research tool that can interface with EMR, in hopes of increasing patient retention through proper site selection, and setting reminders to patients about medication dosing, diary documentation, study procedures and visits scheduling. Ideally through implementing this tool into clinical trials, less effort and money will be spent on recruitment and the rates of adherence and retention will increase.

Keywords: Patient recruitment, retention rates, patient adherence, cost-effective, clinical research tool.

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