Having mentioned doctor referrals, site databases, patient group and community outreach activities as ideally being the best methods of recruiting patients, we now come to the approach that is adopted by the majority of vendors in the space – digital outreach.

If the other methods worked better, this would be an additional process that could be undertaken to help recruit a few extra patients.

What actually happens on the ground, though, is that this method often becomes the primary source of trial participants.

I know there are lots of grumblings by research sites about the poor quality of central ad campaigns. But when done well, digital outreach is a highly effective means of encouraging people to participate in trials.

And as I’ve said before, social media in particular is fertile ground for recruitment campaigns – one reason being the social nature of the platforms means people will share relevant information with people they know.