How to Catalyze a Clinical Trial

Why we're launching this blog

Engaging enough patients to participate in clinical trials is consistently identified as the single largest source of delay in drug development. This hurts not only our ability to bring new treatments forward, but also delays the collection and publication of evidence for the long-term safety and efficacy of many treatments already in use.

Understanding and fixing that delay is our singular focus.

However, we believe that the reasons for the current disconnect between patients, physicians, researchers, and regulators are incredibly complex. There are multiple, major issues of awareness, trust, and understanding that block our way forward. No single trick or shiny new tech widget is going to be nearly enough to get us where we need to go.

So we're launching this blog in an attempt to share our thinking and collaborate openly with others who are attacking the same problems. We promise no ads, only ideas - and we will strive to make our ideas concrete and practical.

Specifically, we believe that any hope at improving enrollment in clinical trials will require progress on 3 levels:

• Stronger empathy and connection with patients
• Mastery of both traditional and novel modes of communications 
• Rigorous and unbiased analysis of data

Posts on this blog will come out on a weekly schedule from multiple contributors within CAHG Trials as well as guest authors. Out first post comes out today: our Senior Data Analyst Sandra Richman tackles the morass of configuration options behind online banner advertising in Dependable or Dispensable? Using Banner Advertising for Patient Recruitment.

We look forward to engaging with you, and truly welcome your feedback - and your objections, second thoughts, counterexamples, improvements, and flat-out disagreements, too! Open, honest, and thoughtful communication is the best way forward.