Patient Recruitment System
Patient Recruitment System (PRS) includes a combination of digital services which increase enrollment into clinical trials. Usually, it is performed by an established Patient Recruitment Service Provider. The patient recruitment sector has experienced rapid growth in recent years, particularly in response to increasing number of global clinical trials.
Patient enrollment is one of the most important stages of the clinical trial process. It can consume a huge amount of time and effort to organize and extract all the related clinical trial’s data. PRS absorbs 30 percent of the clinical timeline, putting the original clinical process in jeopardy of missing important deadlines. Therefore Pharmaceutical and Medical Industry seek for Patient Recruitment Systems with improved timeframe rates. The demand for PRS rises dramatically every year, as the number of patients needed for trials grows radically. The leading cause of this acceleration of new clinical trials is the need to improve medical treatment and to reduce time to market.
Clinical trials are conducted to collect data about the safety and efficacy of new drug and device development. The trials are structured in a series of phases, each designed to address a separate purpose:
- Phase I: The new drug or treatment goes through tests in a small group of people (20-80) for the first time to evaluate its safety, determine a safe dosage range, and identify side effects.
- Phase II: In this stage, the understudy drug/treatment is given to a larger group of people (100-300) to see if it is effective and to further evaluate its safety.
- Phase III: In this stage, it is given to a very large group of people (1,000-3,000) to confirm its effectiveness, monitor side effects, compare it to commonly used treatments, and collect information that will allow the drug or treatment to be used safely.
- Phase IV: At the final stage Post-marketing studies are involved in order to outline additional information including the drug’s risks, benefits, and optimal use.
The discipline of patient recruitment was formed over three decades ago in the U.S.A. This practice was established to meet the need and challenge of successful on-time patient enrollment. This scientific field integrates with feasibility modeling and analysis; country selection; site selection, training and support; metrics and evaluation; marketing communications, media; and public relations.
Digital technology had a strong impact on the improvement of PRS. Due to this rapid development and its compatibility with several Industries, (such as advertising, marketing, screening, tracking data and site performance,) quite a few companies have built proprietary software for a huge range of activities that rely on the Internet.
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