Text Messaging: Enhancing Clinical Trial Patient Recruitment And Enrollment

There is a lot of new research that evaluates the impact of Short Messaging System (SMS, Text Messages) in healthcare settings, such as appointment reminders and medication adherence. Results have demonstrated that SMS intervention groups significantly improved patient behavioral outcomes; patients who received SMS reminders were more likely to show up to appointments on time,⁴ and patients who received SMS reminders were more adherent to medications.⁵ Nonetheless, there is limited research available on the effect of SMS on clinical trial subject enrollment. This article will tell a story about a study site that faced challenges with patient recruitment, and how they used SMS to overcome that challenge. Moreover, this article will analytically assess the impact of SMS on clinical trial subject enrollment.

Johnson County Clin-Trials (JCCT), a clinical research facility that specializes in executing 10-15 vaccine clinical trials per year, was facing issues with enrolling patients rapidly in a tight time frame; traditional enrollment campaigns were slow and time consuming. JCCT used to send e-mail blasts to recruit and enroll patients, however, patient response rates started declining in recent clinical trials. The team at JCCT wanted to be proactive and find another way to better engage patients...