With important healthcare policy decisions dependingon the results of clinical trials and newevidencesuggesting
that fast trial recruitment can even help reduce carbon emissions, a good patient recruitment plan is imperative to the success of a trial. However, many trials
fail to reach theirtarget
sizeleading to time extensions and increased costs. A number of strategies have been proposed toimprove trial
recruitment. This week inTrials,Alison McDonald and
colleagues describe anew proposal.

While on the surface business models and medical research may seem unrelated, they do share some common goals such as striving to find and
maintain customers/patients. The business model describes how
business methodology such as buildingbrand
valuesand making the sale can be used to guide trial recruitment plans and
diagnose problems in trial design.

Using insights from three case studies, McDonald and
colleagues discuss the implementation and feasibility of the business model to clinical
trial recruitment. To make the approach more accessible to trialists, they
provide a translation of the business model into terminology commonly used in
clinical trials. However, further work is to be done so that the model
can be applied consistently to all trials.