
Empowered Patient Podcast
Patient-Centric Approach to Clinical Trial Enrollment Widens Participation and Improves Retention with Robert Maxwell ClinConnect
Robert Maxwell, Founder of ClinConnect, is building this neutral third-party intermediary between patients and clinical trial sponsors, improving on the clinicaltrials.gov platform by streamlining the clinical trial enrollment process. This patient-facing platform provides patients with up-to-date information about trial options and eligibility criteria and guides them through the enrollment process. This resource is particularly significant for the rare disease community, where ClinConnect works with patient advocacy networks to improve study design and identify trial participants.
Robert explains, "One thing that has changed over the last year since we last spoke is we have far more relationships and far better relationships with many clinical trial sponsors. So the folks behind whatever therapeutic or investigational, drug, biologic, whatever it might be. And so when it comes to recruitment and enrollment, we have what are called enrollment criteria, inclusion and exclusion criteria. Those are filed within the protocol with the FDA. Every clinical trial has some set of enrollment criteria."
"Anyone can go to the FDA and get an understanding of what any trial enrollment criteria might be. It's listed on clinicaltrials.gov. But oftentimes what we have found is that the protocol that is on file with the FDA actually might be out of date, it might be invalid. There might be an update. There might be 10 updates that haven't been submitted to the FDA. And so what's helpful when patients work with a platform like ours, or I think we're the only one still somehow the only one doing this, is that we have those direct relationships with the sponsors."
#ClinConnect #ClinicalTrials #ClinicalTrialRecruitment #ClinicalTrialEnrollment #ClinicalTrialRetention #RareDiseases