Recruitment Timelines Not Met

Here’s one reason studies don’t recruit on time:

They don’t start on time.

When a site agrees to participate in a clinical trial, they plan for when the sponsor / CRO tells them it will start.

I reviewed the target global start dates and actual global start dates for 180 clinical trials that we’ve started over the last couple of years and here’s what I found:

In 2021, a clinical trial started an average of 17 days late. That number surprised me as being quite low, but I expect that everyone was really motivated to get things started coming out of the pandemic.

In 2022, the average delay was 73 days. Quite a jump from 2021. I guess everyone went back to their old habits.

Here’s the troubling thing. So far in 2023, the delay is 90 days. Studies are now a full calendar quarter late in starting. As a site, starting three months late means:

1. We have other commitments that now take up our staff time and we can’t focus the resources on your study that we planned.
2. The potential candidates who were interested in the study are no longer interested.
3. As a result of 1 & 2 above, the projections I gave you for recruitment for the study are now way off.
4. In the future, I will be prioritizing studies with more dependable sponsors.

If your study is starting 3 months late, expect that recruitment will be delayed at least 3 months (and likely more) because there are additional factors at play.

I know this is a small sample size, but this trend is disturbing to say the least.