When you think about clinical trials, what comes to mind? The groundbreaking science? The data? The ultimate outcomes? All of that is crucial, of course, but there’s another piece of the puzzle that’s just as important: the patient journey. How participants experience a trial can directly impact the success of the research itself. Patient-centric planning is more than just a checkbox—it’s essential.
We recently hosted a webinar featuring a panel of Greenphire experts, who shared practical strategies for making clinical trials more patient-friendly. Whether you have experience implementing patient-focused programs or this is your first time seeking solutions, these insights will be of value.
Participant Barriers in Clinical Trials
We’ve all heard about the difficulties patients face during clinical trials. The demands of travel, time commitment, and financial difficulties pose significant challenges to patients, often making the trial experience extremely arduous. These burdens are particularly prevalent for individuals with lower socioeconomic status and limited mobility.
Greenphire has developed globally trusted and adopted solutions such as our Patient Payments platform and Travel & Logistics services, to tackle these obstacles head-on. However, implementing the right solutions for your participants and sites starts with early planning. By understanding these issues and costs at the planning stage of trials, we can make them more manageable and less detrimental to the patient experience.
Smart Planning and Budgeting for Success
It’s no surprise that planning and budgeting for patient-centric approaches in clinical trials isn’t easy. With hurdles like compliance, internal approvals, costs, and participant retention, it’s easy to see why planning can be overwhelming. By understanding patient demographics early on and identifying potential challenges, we can create effective, fair plans that prioritize participants.
Interestingly, an audience poll from the webinar revealed that getting internal approval is one of the most common challenges faced by clinical trial professionals. Getting internal buy-in and executing strategies is a tall task without the necessary data and insights required to truly understand the challenges and barriers faced by participants.
Introducing Greenphire’s Patient Experience Dataset
Comprised of data from Greenphire’s 16+ years of experience executing nearly 30 million payments to more than 5 million participants around the world, our Patient Experience Dataset is a powerful tool that provides insights into fair and equitable compensation for clinical trial participants by phase, therapeutic area and country/region. From average stipends to reimbursement costs, travel expenses and transportation methods, it covers all the bases for more efficient and effective planning.
Planning for patient expenses early in a study helps eliminate cost growth over the trial’s lifecycle. In fact, the impact of inflation on patient expenses was discussed during the webinar, highlighting the unexpected hike in ride-share costs by 120% between 2019 and 2024.
Internationally, aspects such as childcare reimbursement are now more prevalent, shifting the typical cost structures of trials. Accurate cost information proves crucial in ensuring patients are adequately compensated and budgets are appropriately charted out.
Far from being static, the dataset is updated regularly to reflect real-time data, making it a reliable tool for cost predictions and planning stages of clinical trials.
We offer customized solutions depending on the preferences of sponsors and outsourcing decisions. The dataset, part of Greenphire’s Budgeting & Benchmarking tool, can be accessed as a stand-alone or can be leveraged with our end-to-end budgeting through the payment solution suite.
Collaborative Solutions for a Patient-Centric Clinical Trial Journey
The patient journey in clinical trials is complex and demands patient-focused decisions from planning to execution. Leveraging tools like Greenphire’s Patient Experience Dataset isn’t just an investment in better trial outcomes—it’s an investment in the well-being of every participant. After all, clinical trials thrive when we make the journey easier, more equitable, and more inclusive.
Collaboration is key. With Greenphire, sponsors, CROs, sites, and patients all working together, we’re paving the way for smoother, more successful clinical trials. It’s a team effort—and every action counts.
