Webinar: Simplify, improve and accelerate how you recruit

[Screen shows three separate video frames for the webinar’s speakers: Sheila Thomas, Meghan McLaughlin and Joaquim Fernandes]

[Voiceover, speaker not shown]

Welcome everyone and thank you for joining us for today’s webinar: “Clinical Trial Recruitment: Simplify, improve and accelerate how you recruit.”

This presentation and any related materials may contain confidential and/or proprietary information intended only for invitees of CVS Health®. If you are not an invitee of CVS Health, use of these materials is prohibited. To participate in this webinar, you acknowledge and agree that you will maintain the confidentiality of any CVS Health information and will not share it without prior consent of CVS Health.

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Now I would like to hand it off to our host, Sheila Thomas, vice president and general manager, CVS Healthspire Life Sciences. Please go ahead, Sheila.

[Sheila Thomas, host]

Good morning, everyone. I am, again, Sheila Thomas, vice president, general manager here at CVS Healthspire Life Sciences Research. And I’m really thrilled to be joined today by two outstanding leaders in clinical research, Joaquim Fernandes, who is the head of science, research and analytics, and Dr. Meghan McLaughlin, the director of patient recruitment operations.

Today’s webinar is titled, “Clinical Trial Recruitment: Simplify, improve and accelerate how you recruit.”

We’ll explore how CVS Healthspire is helping to reshape clinical trial recruitment through data-driven strategies and patient-centered approaches. CVS Healthspire Life Sciences Research is committed to empowering health care decisions and advancing clinical research by translating real-world data into actionable, evidence-based insights.

Before we dive into our discussion today, let’s set the stage with a brief overview of clinical trial recruitment and the challenges that make the work we do so essential.

• Clinical trials are research studies designed to evaluate safety, efficacy and effectiveness of medical, surgical or behavioral interventions.
• They represent the foundation of evidence-based medicine, providing the necessary data to bring new treatments, devices and therapies to patients.
• Each trial follows a very structured protocol that ensures scientific rigor, patient safety and regulatory compliance. Ultimately, clinical trials connect innovation to improve health outcomes by translating that scientific discovery into real-world medical treatment.
• Yet one of the most persistent challenges in clinical research is patient recruitment. Identifying individuals who meet precise eligibility criteria can be complex and really time sensitive.
• Many potential participants are unaware of available trials, they’re uncertain about eligibility or they hesitate to enroll due to logistical or trust-related concerns.
• Another major challenge is ensuring diversity and representation. Historically, certain populations have been underrepresented in clinical research, limiting the generalizability of study results.
• Finally, even after recruitment, retaining those patients through trial completion really requires sustained engagement, very clear communication and attention to the patient experience.

Here at CVS Healthspire Life Sciences Research, we are strategically positioned to address these barriers through data-driven innovation and deep collaboration across the health care ecosystem.

• Our ability to integrate real-world data from pharmacy, clinical, and retail channels allows us to identify eligible patients more precisely and inclusively.
• By combining these advanced analytics with personalized outreach and patient-centered engagement strategies, we help our sponsors accelerate clinical trial timelines while advancing diversity and retention.
• Through partnerships with life sciences companies, the government, academic researchers, providers and communities, CVS Healthspire Life Sciences Research is advancing a model of clinical trial recruitment that is efficient and, ultimately, bringing new therapies to patients faster.

With that foundation in place, let’s move into our main discussion and hear directly from our experts on the panel today with respect to their approaches and their insights.

I’m going to start off with Dr. McLaughlin. Can you walk us through a typical recruitment initiative?

[Meghan McLaughlin, panelist]

Thank you, Dr. Thomas, of course.

A typical recruitment initiative really starts with understanding the study protocol. What is the patient inclusion/exclusion criteria, and what will the experience look like for the study participants?

Understanding the specifics of the protocol will help us with upfront targeting, really identifying the right audience that then can be delivered as highly qualified potential participants for each study.

Next, we’ll engage patients. And for us this consists of direct-to-patient, multichannel outreach. Outreaching to patients via different channels will allow us to connect with patients in a way that will resonate well across different populations.

For the initial patient engagement, we’ll give some basic information on the study, invite potential participants to learn more and see if they pre-qualify through an online pre-screener.

Through that upfront, precise patient targeting, we’re able to deliver a more qualified potential participant more likely to match that inclusion/exclusion criteria of the study protocol and then hand off those qualified referrals to sites.

[Sheila Thomas, host]

Thank you, Dr. McLaughlin. That’s a great starting point because it sets the foundation for everything we’ll discuss today.

Another question I have for you is: We’ve heard a lot about precision patient targeting, so what is precision patient targeting in the context of clinical trial recruitment and enhanced study efficiency?

[Meghan McLaughlin, panelist]

I’d love to tag Joaquim in on this one to really get into the details behind targeting.

[Joaquim Fernandes, panelist]

Thanks, Megan, I can certainly chime in here. First of all, thank you Dr. Thomas for the question and also for the opportunity to talk about clinical trials.

At the ISPOR conference earlier this year, we talked about the ever-growing use of real-world data in research for evidence and insight generation, safety-signal detection and to assess therapy effectiveness.

If you extend that use case to clinical trial recruitment, the focus of precision patient targeting (PPT) is to use all real-world patient data to pinpoint and identify patients that are most likely to engage and benefit from investigational therapy.

But we also want to do this by minimizing the inclusion of patients who are unlikely to respond to trial outreach. And so the approach combines patient data (could be clinical, demographic) along with analytics, AI and machine learning, coupled with recruitment channels (like mail, email, digital and text) to outreach these trial-suitable participants.

Ultimately, the goal is to move away from population-based trials when evaluating next-generation treatments, potentially resulting in better outcomes and trial success.

[Sheila Thomas, host]

Thank you very much for that. I really appreciate it, Joaquim. It seems that precision patient targeting is a buzzword today, so I appreciate understanding that perspective.

Now I’ll go back to Dr. McLaughlin. How do you promote patient engagement?

[Meghan McLaughlin, panelist]

Getting potential participants to engage starts with understanding the targeted patient population and the therapeutic area. It’s important to understand what someone may be experiencing with their condition, how their doctor communicates with them about it and what factors may motivate them to then participate in a clinical trial.

This all will help inform the tone and theme of our engagement materials. In our patient engagement, we’ll also lean on the existing relationship, loyalty and trust that our patients have with CVS Health.

Recruitment support doesn’t stop after that initial engagement. There are many challenges that Dr. Thomas had mentioned in getting patients from that first engagement all the way through to enrollment.

And because of that, an end-to-end solution is vital in driving clinical trial enrollment. Being able to track the progress and encourage referrals actioned at the site, and also being able to create a more seamless patient experience, making it easier for the patient to continue on toward enrollment is very important.

[Sheila Thomas, host]

Dr. McLaughlin, thank you so much for sharing that. Recruitment with respect to engagement is critical, not just for recruitment, but also for retention, and it sounds like for overall success of the study.

I’d like to ask Joaquim this question regarding some advances. What are we seeing with respect to some advancements in patient recruitment?

[Joaquim Fernandes, panelist]

Thank you for that question, Dr. Thomas.

Much like the last-mile problem in other businesses, with the slow and inefficient delivery of products and services, there is a real last-mile problem in clinical trials. And in this case, it refers to significant challenges that are encountered in the execution of a trial — from recruitment to enrollment.

Overcoming these hurdles requires patient-centric strategies as well as technology and, of course, data.

Patient-centric optimization focuses on aligning the trial’s offerings and the patient’s needs and preferences that results in an overall satisfaction and trial retention.

An example here would be the placement of trial sites in locations that are convenient to patients. Not only in terms of distances, but also considering factors such as travel times and driving distances. We can do this by analyzing and visualizing geospatial data. And by doing that, we can find optimal trial site placements relative to patients.

Some of the other things we need to consider are factors related to outreach channel preferences, language support, site accessibility and scheduling, unmet clinical needs, socioeconomic status, and physical and psychological barriers. Addressing these needs is very crucial to the success of the clinical trial.

Lastly, data-driven trial intelligence, which uses analytics, machine learning and AI to mine patient data and match it to trials’ inclusion/exclusion criteria.

[Sheila Thomas, host]

I really appreciate you sharing that information and specifically what stands out to you. We know that innovation is happening very fast in this space. And so, thanks again for sharing that.

This last question is for both of you.

What are some things that you’re both excited about in this space of clinical trial recruitment?

I’m going to start with Dr. McLaughlin.

[Meghan McLaughlin, panelist]

I’m always excited to see advances being made in medicine through clinical research and the impact that we can have there.

With respect to patient recruitment, I’m most excited about continually advancing our capabilities, being able to expand the ways that we’re reaching patients, having more digital outreach and meeting patients where they are.

It will be important for us along the way to keep in mind the patient and site support, and as Joaquim mentioned, highlighting new ways to really support that last-mile issue of getting patients all the way through to enrollment.

So not just engaging them upfront, but really supporting the patient moving all the way through to enrolling in the trial.

[Sheila Thomas, host]

What about you, Joaquim? What are you most excited about in the future of clinical trial recruitment?

[Joaquim Fernandes, panelist]

Again, I am very excited about these new sources of data that can be potentially used to optimize clinical trials. Data sources such as clinical site and investigative data, past trial conduct information can be extremely invaluable.

And by marrying these new sources of data with the rich real-world patient data, we are able to address several of the gaps that are inherent in medical trials today.

[Sheila Thomas, host]

Now that we’ve had a very good discussion with respect to clinical trial recruitment and we got some insights and approaches from our panelists, let’s open the floor for questions from the audience.

Please use the Q&A feature in your webinar interface to submit your questions. We’ll do our best to address as many as we can in the time we have remaining.

Okay, I see a great question that’s coming in for Joaquim. This question is regarding strategy.

What other strategies may be helpful in recruiting and retaining patients, from your perspective?

[Joaquim Fernandes, panelist]

That’s a great question, Sheila. Thank you.

On the recruitment front, there is a huge untapped population of patients that may be eligible for clinical trials. These are patients who use over-the-counter treatments or health care products. But those purchases are not recorded in any real-world database, especially not the ones that we use to identify patients for trials.

These patients may be considered either as early stage of disease, or they may not have the means to access appropriate care.

By incorporating these patients into clinical trials, we not only increase representation from disadvantaged areas, but we also increase the likelihood of meeting recruitment goals.

On the retention side, the strategies typically focus on regular and clear communication with trial participants to address their questions, concerns or specific needs. An informed participant is more likely to remain engaged with therapies and, therefore, less likely to drop out of a trial.

So, to that end, a patient-interfacing trial platform that is resourced with well-trained and empathetic staff can vastly improve patient experience, increase the stickiness and trial retention.

[Sheila Thomas, host]

Thank you, Joaquim. Another great question for you, since I know that you lead a team that engages with the FDA.

What other types of data are being collected and submitted to the FDA by trial sponsors?

[Joaquim Fernandes, panelist]

That’s another big question and there is a lot of useful information beyond trial data that is now being reported to the FDA as part of new drug applications.

I mentioned earlier the use of real-world data (RWD) that is expanding, and real-world data can be used to provide complete landscape assessments of therapeutic areas. That can include a whole host of things, including describing disease prevalence, current modalities of care, patient disparities in accessing and receiving care, reimbursement or payment models, can also be used for summarizing disease progression or clinical outcomes associated with current treatments.

Lastly, quantifying health care resource utilization and costs that are so essential in any economic analysis.

There’s also another piece to this, which is capturing the voice of the patient. That includes the needs, the experiences and the preferences. These have also been included in FDA submissions. Patient feedback is captured either through validated instruments or through qualitative research and are now rich and actionable insights. A lot of this information is currently being included on FDA application submissions.

[Sheila Thomas, host]

Thank you, Joaquim. Dr. McLaughlin, this next question is right up your alley.

In a recruitment plan, what are some factors that would influence your engagement strategy?

[Meghan McLaughlin, panelist]

There are so many factors that will impact our strategy upfront and along the whole way of our project. As I mentioned, understanding the patient and the condition is super important and will help set our strategy from the beginning.

Timing can actually be another really big factor of our recruitment strategy. The timing of when that patient engagement is needed within the participant journey. So, for example, if we need to reach a patient after they’re starting a new medication, mailing a letter to someone’s home isn’t going to be the best option in this scenario. Faster methods, like email or a phone call, would be quicker and more effective in this case.

Patient demographics can be another factor. So certain age ranges and certain conditions can influence a person’s engagement with our outreach types.

We will base all of these decisions and strategy also on our previous experience and success within certain therapeutic areas, while still treating every opportunity as a unique opportunity. So we keep that plan very flexible, with the ability to adjust and optimize based off of what we’re seeing work best for that particular project at that current time.

[Sheila Thomas, host]

Thank you so much, Dr. McLaughlin. The questions keep coming in, but it looks like we only have time for one more question. This one’s for you also.

How can CVS Healthspire help support conversion of patients to enrollment?

This is a very important question, so how can we support?

[Meghan McLaughlin, panelist]

First, it’s by providing sites with a more qualified patient. Not all referrals will convert to enrollments equally, but by using the precise upfront targeting that we’ve talked about today and continuously refining that throughout the study project, patients are more likely to meet that study criteria. So handing off to sites a more qualified patient, more likely to meet the criteria and move on toward enrollment.

Making it easier for sites is another way to support enrollment conversion. Having an easy-to-use platform for sites, a mechanism for us to follow up on those referrals is also very important. And that will help with moving the patients through toward enrollment timely.

So the combination between having the right patients, making it easy for the sites and being a support to help move those patients through to enrollment.

[Sheila Thomas, host]

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate you answering all of those great questions from the audience.

And I want to thank Joaquim and Dr. McLaughlin for sharing their insights today on how precision targeting and patient-centered engagement are transforming clinical trial recruitment.

We also appreciate our audience for joining and contributing such thoughtful questions.

Here at CVS Healthspire Life Sciences Research, we remain committed to empowering health care decisions and advancing clinical research through evidence-based and data-driven research.

We look forward to continuing this very important dialogue in future sessions.

Thanks again for joining us this morning.

©2025 CVS Health and/or one of its affiliates. All rights reserved. 

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