Bridging the last mile of clinical trial participation: Lessons from patients, caregivers, clinicians, advocacy partners and research teams

Penn State researchers are invited to learn more about managing the "last mile" of clinical studies. Clinical research teams invest significant effort in designing, launching and managing clinical studies. Yet one of the hardest parts often remains the "last mile": helping patients discover relevant studies, understand their options and make informed participation decisions.

Closing this gap is increasingly central to translational science, health equity and the democratization of research.

Drawing on experience working with patients, caregivers, advocacy organizations, clinicians and research teams, this session examines the last mile from three core perspectives.

During this session, presenters will explore emerging strategies to managing the last mile of clinical trials and illustrate them through real-world examples and demonstrations. These include simplified study information and multilingual education, artificial intelligence-assisted guidance and study matching, simpler referral workflows, and engagement analytics. Presenters will also talk about how these approaches work alongside existing systems, such as ClinicalTrials.gov, how they keep patient consent, transparency and human oversight in place, and how we might measure their impact.

REGISTER