By Jeffrey Norris on UCSF.edu
Medicine does not advance unless people participate in research studies to learn more about health, disease and new treatments. However, only a low percentage of people ever do.
Many clinical trials fail to meet their recruitment goals, putting medical advances at risk and greatly increasing the cost of drug development. One of the issues is that potential participants may be unaware of the opportunity to enroll in clinical trials because physicians tell few patients about opportunities to participate in research.
“Recruitment is one of the most difficult aspects of any clinical study,” said Nariman Nasser, director of participant recruitment at UCSF's Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI). “Eighty percent of clinical trials fail to meet their enrollment goals. The recruitment of research participants is critical to conducting clinical and translational research, and if we cannot recruit adequately, we simply cannot carry out successful clinical research.”
A study published in the November 2011 issue of Academic Medicine found that at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), a leading academic medical center, one-third of all studies terminated between 2005 and 2009 had zero or only one participant. Unsuccessful recruitment for these studies cost OHSU almost $1 million annually.
Want to help advance medicine by participating in a clinical trial? Join the UCSF Research Participant Registry.
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