Measuring Centralized Patient Outreach Recruitment Strategies and their Costs in Clinical Trials

Although patient recruitment is a major contributor to clinical trial costs, expenditures on centralized-sponsor-initiated patient outreach strategies-across therapeutic areas remain poorly characterized. Quantifying the specific outreach tactics and their expenditures is essential for optimizing resource allocation and effective planning.

The Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development collected centralized patient outreach recruitment metrics and cost data from eight sponsor and contract research organizations across several major therapeutic areas, including oncology, central nervous system (CNS), and cardiovascular disease. Data gathered focused on study/protocol characteristics, study enrollment data, recruitment tactics, and budgetary items for 32 studies.

Across six therapeutic areas, the median budget for centralized patient outreach recruitment was $1,334,821.00. Social media, which included Facebook ads, Instagram, and Google ads was widely used across all studies, with an average allocation of 64.7% of the total centralized patient outreach recruitment budget. The median centralized outreach recruitment cost-per-patient ranged from $143 in vaccine studies to $11,392 in immunology studies.