How to improve enrollment in clinical trials?
Nemours Children’s Health System, a non-profit organization, has presented the results of their research in finding new ways to improve recruitment and participation presented at the American Thoracic Society Annual Conference. They have stated that videos and other creative visual materials may help to get informed consent during clinical studies and simplify understanding the ideas of the planned trial for potential participants.
Having got funding from the National Institutes of Health, Nemours has launched a pilot study with a brand-new design in order to save time and money. They used a 15-minute video, from which participants got step-by-step information about the study. Researchers also organized telemedicine patient’s visits, online patient diaries, and electronic funds transfer system for trial compensation.
Kathryn Blake, director of Nemours’ Center for Pharmacogenomics and Translational Research, says: “Right now, 80 percent of clinical trials are delayed because too few people sign up to participate. Nemours is investigating how we can improve recruitment and participation in research. As a part of this project, we looked at new ways to obtain informed consent, by utilizing a 15-minute video that incorporates eLearning principles for a more visually engaging way for participants of all literacy and health literacy levels to digest the information.”
They compared two groups of participants (children and their parents). Participants from the first group watched a 15-minute video presentation with special tabs that participants could click on for getting more detailed information. This presentation also contained multiple-choice questions so that to make sure that viewers got the information right. Participants from the second group read a standard 13-page informed consent document. After signing the consents, the scientists asked the participants to fill in a 17-item questionnaire about the study. Participants from both groups performed equally. However, researchers have asked the participants to go through the same questionnaire again five months later (when the study was already over). It turned out that participants from the first group (who watched the video) this time performed much better than the participants from the second group. Researchers have concluded that using video materials helps to retain information better.
Nemours was the first organization who used telemedicine to boost pediatric research. However, other scientific organizations start using telemedicine opportunities for their research, for instance, for screening and enrolling the patients in clinical studies.
Source: News medical.
