For most of my time in patient recruitment, I’ve focused on recruiting participants for clinical trials – for investigative drugs and sometimes medical devices.

I’ve also recruited patients for private medical practices. That’s actually where I started off, in 1998, when one of the first clients for my digital marketing consultancy was a local doctor who wanted to recruit patients for his specialist service in the gastro realm.

I subsequently recruited patients for aesthetic surgery – face lifts, nose jobs, botox etc. And also spent a lot of time attracting patients to a cognitive impairment clinic – which also ran trials for such things as Alzheimer’s.

The main difference between the two disciplines is in the regulations. Obviously trial recruitment requires ethics approval, while attracting private patients doesn’t have the same focus on non-coercion.

And it’s something I always suggested to research sites – recruiting patients for any non-trial work can help provide additional funds.