Cardiovascular disease patient recruitment for clinical trials

Need help accelerating your study?

Cardiovascular disease patient recruitment for clinical trials

Need help accelerating your study?

Cardiovascular disease ranks as the world’s top cause of death, claiming over 18 million lives in 2020, representing 30% of global mortality. Despite the urgency for improved treatments, recruiting patients for heart disease trials remains a challenge.

With 18+ years of experience supporting 70+ cardiovascular studies worldwide, we specialize in tailored digital outreach that can reduce randomization costs by up to 50%. Discover our successful track record in our case study.

Finding cardiovascular disease patients based on trial protocols

Cardiovascular disease studies exhibit a broad spectrum of requirements, ranging from patients in a relatively stable condition to those undergoing acute treatment. Furthermore, some research protocols involve a modest cohort of a few hundred patients, whereas others demand a substantial enrollment of up to 1,000 patients spanning global sites. This diversity underscores the significant variability among different cardiovascular diseases.

To effectively recruit patients for cardiovascular disease studies, organizers require a vendor with expertise, patient insights, and data-driven screening methods due to the technical nature of study protocols.

While it is commonly assumed by clinical trial organizers that primary care professionals offer “higher quality of referrals” due to their well-documented cases of heart patients, research conducted by McDermott (2016), among others, has revealed a stark contrast. These studies indicate that only approximately 10% of randomizations for conditions like peripheral artery disease originate via this route.

One significant factor, as highlighted in our blog discussing the barriers to patient recruitment for cardiovascular diseases, is the failure to both recognize and address these barriers.

Enrolling heart patients aligned with your protocol  

Our in-house medical teams will review your protocol, and by leveraging our extensive experience and profound understanding of the patient population, we will craft a tailored recruitment campaign.

We’ll then develop comprehensive study and indication pages, patient-focused pre-screening tools, and standardized script for the eventual phone screening process.

Want to know more about patient recruitment for cardiovascular disease? Download our free whitepaper here.

Addressing patient diversity in cardiovascular disease trials

Historically, minorities, people of low socioeconomic status and women have been underrepresented in cardiovascular disease clinical trials. This is despite the fact that People of Color (BIPOC) and people of lower economic status are at higher risk for cardiovascular disease.

Furthermore, patient recruitment campaigns often overlook gender disparities. For instance, men typically experience cardiovascular disease at a younger age and have a higher risk of conditions like coronary artery disease, whereas women face a greater risk of stroke and report significantly different symptoms.

In our cardiovascular disease campaigns, we consistently tailor our language, imagery and descriptions to resonate with individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds.

 

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Leverage ClinLife®’s patient-centric trial database for cardiovascular disease recruitment  

Studies show that a better understanding of the clinical trial process, safety measures and potential benefits, are the main reasons for participating in a cardiovascular disease trial. More so, recent studies show that financial compensation for many patients is at most “a nice to have”, and not a key factor in influencing their decision to participate in heart disease clinical trials.

For this reason our ClinLife® platform is designed in direct collaboration with patients for patients.

On both our study and indication landing pages, we inform potential participants about clinical research on the specific type of cardiovascular disease, as well as about the clinical trial process.

In addition, we recently launched our ClinLife® patient blog in both Poland and Germany, where we answer questions we receive, for example, from our 243,000 followers on Facebook about the clinical trial process, safety measures, and the ethics committee and where we report on current research progress in cardiovascular disease.

Our digital targeting techniques

We have four ways of targeting patients when performing cardiovascular disease patient recruitment, and continuously review performance to optimize engagement and trial registrations

Location and capacity targeting

We reach cardiovascular disease patients living in areas within a predesignated radius around sites. Depending on the trial protocol and the type of cardiovascular disease as well as the location of the sites, we create a detailed patient profile and matching targeting method. Indeed, our motto that no two studies are the same, is particularly true for cardiovascular diseases. 

Interest-based targeting

Patients searching or engaging (e.g., likes, shares, comments, etc.) with heart disease related content and symptoms are shown study advertisements. At Clariness, we apply great importance to the representativeness of our advertising. We include images of people from different backgrounds and highlight for example that women have different symptoms and experiences with heart diseases.  

Demographic targeting and pre-screener

Gender, age, ethnicity, social-economic class, location, and other demographics are used as filters to find patients (and their families and closed ones) most likely to qualify for the study protocol. Based on pre-screener data, this patient profile used in outreach campaigns is constantly updated. This way we are able to target group-specific barriers, from lack of trust in clinical science among minorities, to travel distance and understanding of difficulties in participating and health literacy of elderly patients.  

Behavioral targeting

We select from over 40+ possible digital channels the most cost-effective option and reach out to our large ClinLife database with a total of 1.3 million users worldwide, based on their location and the trial protocol inclusion and exclusion criteria. By continuously analyzing the (anonymized) behavior of those successfully enrolled, we can understand and reach similar people.  

Are you designing a cardiovascular disease clinical trial, or have one underway?

We can help you find the right patients, at the right time. To find out more about our cardiovascular disease  patient recruitment, contact us.