EVALUATION OF DIFFERENT ADVERTISEMENT APPROACHES USED IN RECRUITMENT OF SUBJECTS INTO CLINICAL TRIALS

Abstract

Recruitment of subjects is one of the essential components of a successful trial conduct. The aim of this study was to evaluate relative effectiveness of different advertisement approaches used for subject recruitment in clinical trials by using overall response and enrollment rates as criteria. Advertisement approaches selected were newspaper, electronic media, physician referral, direct mailing and direct patient contact. Recruitment data were collected from various sources for different clinical trials. Advertisement, eligibility, enrollment and overall enrollment efficiencies were calculated and compared. Results show that physician referral has the highest advertisement efficiency followed by direct patient contact, direct mailing, electronic media, and newspaper. Physician referral was also shown to have the highest overall enrollment efficiency compared to all other approaches. This is very well may be due to the targeted approach used by physician referral and other more direct methods compared with more general, blanketing print and electronic media approaches.