FAQs: Finally Answered Questions

Our Clariness experts provide clear, expert-backed answers to the questions we hear most from our clients

Q: Which indications does Clariness excel in?

A: “We pride ourselves on covering everything from Audiology to Urology, having supported over 120 indications since we were founded in 2005. However, looking back over the last 24 months, we’ve had a very successful time in migraine, pain, diabetes, weight management, Alzheimer’s disease, vitiligo and atopic dermatitis.

Typically, our value add isn’t defined by previously successful indications, as we are constantly supporting new indications that our clients are struggling with. Last year we supported recruitment for Sjogren’s syndrome which is broadly accepted as a ‘rarer’ disease, and despite this being the first time we’ve supported the indication, we contributed 44% of randomizations across 9 countries, ending recruitment 1 month earlier than planned.

You can learn more about the indications we’ve covered in the therapy areas section of our website, at www.clariness.com/therapeutic-areas”

Anjana Nagrajan, Team Lead Medical Affairs, Clariness

Q: How much does Clariness rely on Facebook for its patient advertising?

A:  “We align our usage of Facebook with the target patient population, in China, this will be 0%, in other countries it can account for 40-60% of a campaign’s media budget. While in our industry, campaigns that leverage Facebook are seen as less innovative, the truth is, Facebook still holds the largest number of social network users in the world, 3 billion users to be precise.

We’re constantly exploring various channels – from programmatic advertising and interest groups to Patient Advocacy Groups (PAGs), TikTok influencers, Spotify, YouTube, and even direct-to-HCP faxes (yes, fax – and it works). However, choosing not to leverage a proven, cost-effective platform that can reach one-third of the world’s population (when appropriate) would not be innovative to us – it would be wasteful. At the end of the day, what matters is not the channel mix, but the number of randomizations we deliver, and as experts, we will optimize campaigns based on data to reach and excel targets – within budget and on time.”

Dilek Denizli, VP Patient Recruitment Strategy, Clariness

Q: Are your patient funnels guesswork?

A: “While some patient recruitment companies may rely on hope, Clariness takes a different approach. We leverage proprietary insights from ClinLife® to deeply understand the patient population – analyzing factors such as age, gender, protocol specific inclusion and exclusion criteria, social determinants of health (SDOH), prior enrollment history, pass rates in previous trials on our platform, country sequencing, and past site performance. This allows us to calculate a Medical Pass Rate down to 0.1% for each protocol step.

Beyond patient profiling, we integrate real-time performance outreach data to determine the most effective recruitment channels. Our extensive global and local partner network – spanning hundreds of organizations – helps optimize engagement strategies, including best-performing marketing channels, time-of-day effectiveness, and cost per conversion.

With over 54 key variables tracked in our recruitment funnels, we assess both medical and marketing reachability scores. These insights are then mapped against country-specific cost data, referral scheduling trends, and consent rates to provide sponsors with a clear, data-backed actual vs. planned reporting and cost-per-patient projection.

This rigorous, data-driven methodology ensures that over 85% of our studies are completed under budget and/or on time, delivering unmatched efficiency and cost-effectiveness for our sponsors.”

Dilek Denizli, VP Patient Recruitment Strategy, Clariness

Q: Do you offer 100% risk-free pricing?

A: “We align with our clients’ commercial goals, offering competitive yet realistic risk-share models. While we understand the importance of commercial frameworks, our priority is the needs of the study team – particularly ensuring strong patient contribution to each study.  Unfortunately, in patient recruitment, there is no such thing as ‘risk-free’. While some vendors may promise 100% risk-free recruitment, these offers often lead to disappointing outcomes, including low patient engagement and complicated contracts – ultimately placing your study at greater risk than before recruitment support was initiated.

We deliver what we promise. Having delivered 25,000+ randomizations across 100+ indications in our 20 years of operation, we know what really goes into recruiting and retaining patients, and we wouldn’t still be here if we didn’t deliver exceptional value for our clients.”

Stefan Mayer-Eggersmann, Chief Commercial Officer, Clariness

Q: How big is ClinLife®?

A: “Huge. ClinLife® is an exceptionally large and comprehensive clinical trial marketplace platform with significant global reach and impact. The platform has served as the central hub for more than 1,200 clinical studies and has been utilized by over 8,000 research sites across 54 countries worldwide. Its impressive scale is further demonstrated by the fact that more than 250 million patients have connected with the platform to explore clinical research opportunities.

Outside of just the sheer stats, what distinguishes ClinLife® from other patient portals in the market is its integrated architecture connecting patient experience in the platform with our backend operations with near real time data and optimization with historic data. This integrated approach provides a significant competitive advantage in the clinical trial recruitment landscape that positions ClinLife® as a uniquely powerful platform. It seamlessly connects patients with appropriate clinical research opportunities on a global scale, ensuring broad reach and cost efficiency.

Gopi Krishnamurthy, Chief Technology & Product Officer, Clariness

Q: You claim to recruit and have an office in China; how successful are you as a western-based provider?

A: “We first opened our doors to the China office over 6 years ago, the same year we celebrated supporting our 1,000th study, and from there we built a network of trusted partners, launched ClinLife® on WeChat, and delivered surprisingly exceptional results ever since.

Most recently, we supported a sponsor in patient recruitment for an international cardiovascular outcomes study in China. The sponsor faced a significant challenge with a screen fail rate (SFR) between 80-95% due to the study’s complexity, which led to low enrollment numbers. In addition, China’s stringent regulatory restrictions on online advertising meant that we needed to develop a strategic but measurable offline recruitment approach. We leveraged our network of 20 trusted local affiliates to engage patient communities effectively. By working directly with healthcare providers and their patients, we enhanced patient identification efforts and built a foundation of trust within the communities. This approach allowed us to reduce the screen fail rate by 55%. As a result, we were able to deliver more randomizations than initially planned, utilizing only a third of the budget.”

Dilek Denizli, VP Patient Recruitment Strategy, Clariness

Q: What is the role of the Enrollment Success Team (EST)?

A: The Enrollment Success Team (EST) is a global taskforce of approximately 100 individuals who provide dedicated support to both sites and patients, ensuring a smooth and efficient process.

Site support

• Sites are trained and supported to use the ClinLife® portal for accurate referral tracking
• Training and support will be provided in the site staff’s local language
• The EST will make regular contact with sites to increase engagement, understand  protocol complexity and site challenges
• Can assist with scheduling patients at site, or recontacting patients via phone to confirm interest if requested by the site
• Clariness tracks and regularly reports all major KPIs and metrics to the sponsor

Patient support

• The EST will attempt to contact all patients once they have completed the online pre-screening and registered for clinical trial participation
• Answering patient questions, providing the site contact details, transferring their call to the site and assisting with scheduling an appointment at the site if allowed by the site
• Available by phone or email in the patient’s local language

Anaita Tejpal, Head of Enrollment Success Team, Clariness

Q: What is your relationship like with sites?

A: “We’re proud partners to over 8,000 sites, backed by a stellar site-level NPS of 9 – a clear indicator of the trust and satisfaction we’ve earned.

We actively train and support site staff in their local languages to ensure seamless collaboration. Our team takes on many of the time-consuming tasks that can burden sites – such as managing the volume of patient referrals per week flows, scheduling patient visits, following up with patients, and only sending pre-qualified patients to the site.

Sites consistently tell us they appreciate how we help lighten their workload while keeping patients engaged and on track. Simply put, sites love working with us because we make their jobs easier and their trials more successful.”

Anaita Tejpal, Head of Enrollment Success Team, Clariness

Q: What if other sponsors list studies for the same indication on ClinLife®? Do we lose patients to them?

A: “Your study-specific media budget is always directed exclusively to your study’s dedicated landing page on ClinLife®. While it’s possible that other sponsors may list studies targeting the same indication on our platform, this benefits patients by providing them with more options and supporting their autonomy and well-being. It’s important to note, this does not negatively impact our sponsors. Even when multiple studies focus on the same condition, each has unique characteristics – such as country availability, site locations, and specific eligibility criteria which guide patient matching. Because of these distinctions, it’s rare for one study to “lose” a patient to another. In cases where there is overlap in indication and site footprint, we ensure transparency by notifying the sponsor or CRO. From there, it’s up to the sponsor and site to determine any appropriate next steps to support the study’s recruitment goals.”

Moritz Kloss, Sr. VP of ClinLife Registry, Clariness

Q: We prefer to work with CROs. How is Clariness different?

A: “We frequently partner with CROs and complement their recruitment efforts – not compete with them. While CROs oversee overall study operations, we focus specifically on accelerating patient recruitment. This is why we are partnered with the top 5 CROs, many of which we have worked with for over a decade.

On average, we contribute over 20% of total randomizations for each study. With 20 years of experience across 100+ indications and over 25,000 randomizations, we bring deep expertise and proven impact.

You can explore our case studies here: www.clariness.com/case-studies to see how we’ve helped drive study success.”

Dilek Denizli, VP Patient Recruitment Strategy, Clariness

Q: How do you ensure that study sites are not overwhelmed by referrals that do not meet the inclusion/exclusion criteria?

A: “Our Enrollment Success Team (EST) actively manages the volume of patient referrals per week to maintain a smooth enrollment process. Our global task force of approximately 100 dedicated, multilingual team members work closely with both patients (through Patient Service & Success) and sites (via Site Partnership Management). To prevent sites from being over-burdened with unsuitable referrals, we:

• Regularly communicate with study sites to assess their weekly referral processing progress
• Temporarily pause referrals to sites when needed, allowing them time to handle existing cases efficiently, managing capacity
• Continuously refine our two-step screening process, to validate patient contact details and willingness to participate in clinical trials, to improve referral quality

This approach ensures that sites receive a manageable cadence of high-quality referrals, leading to a more efficient enrollment process.”

Anaita Tejpal, Head of Enrollment Success Team, Clariness

Q: How are you leveraging AI in your patient recruitment?

A: “As a pioneer in digital patient recruitment, we have a long history of embracing innovative technologies. Our CEO and Co-Founder, Michael Stadler, often shares stories of early meetings where he had to persuade sponsors to shift their focus from offline to digital recruitment strategies by highlighting the rapid growth of global internet usage.

 This legacy of innovation naturally extends to our adoption of AI in recruitment efforts. We continuously explore new ways to integrate AI throughout every project phase, enhancing the capabilities of our human experts at Clariness.

As early as proposing our services, we create AI-powered patient funnels, that not only create highly accurate forecasts, but also identify better site locations, barriers to recruitment, and more. In the campaign design, we use AI to analyze patient population data to understand common language used in each area we’re recruiting, which imagery resonates most and combines this with patient insight we gather directly from patients within our database. Then throughout recruitment, we use AI to guide our teams and resources, for example in analyzing patient contacting times and responses on a global scale, which has enabled our team to achieve 90% patient reachability. There’s a growing number of applications, which we are constantly exploring, in a compliant manner.”

Gopi Krishnamurthy, Chief Technology & Product Officer, Clariness