One of the issues that frequently comes up when looking at the problems of patient recruitment and retention is that of communication. Or, more accurately I guess, lack of or bad or confusing communication.

Big pharma companies are notorious for having internal ‘silos’ such that one department doesn’t understand what another is doing. Somewhat crazily, this often ends up with completely different people working on procurement for trial solutions than those who will actually be managing those solutions. And I’ve never understood why a company’s medical sales team can’t also provide details of current trials that a doctor’s patients might be interested in.

As well as internal comms, of course, there’s often a very poor level of communication between the trial operations stakeholders. With sponsors, CROs, research sites, and vendors not sharing relevant information with each other – to the detriment of the overall results and outcomes of the trial.