Most clinical trials have a series of procedures in place that are simply imposed on the participants regarding when and how they take part.

For sure there are good reasons behind this. And having patients attend research sites is the only suitable method of monitoring them for certain types of trials.

But I wonder what would happen if we could offer patients a choice of, say, which day they attend the site, or if it would be possible to attend out of normal office hours.

Taking this a step further, it would be interesting to see the results from providing the option to have some monitoring visits in their own home, or even at their local doctor’s office.

I’m not suggesting this would magically solve all the problems of patient recruitment and retention. But it certainly seems that offering people choices that fit into their lifestyle would be a good thing to consider.