Communication with trial participants is one of the areas you’d expect to work well when it comes to clinical trials. Keeping patients informed about what’s going on would appear to be an essential factor in whether a trial is successful or not.

Unfortunately, however, it’s very often the case that participants are either kept in the dark about the progress of the trial, or they are presented with information that might baffle anyone except the clinicians involved in designing the original protocol.

The EU has mandated that trial information has to include a layperson’s summary – but in my experience, the definition of what a layperson might understand that is used by the people writing the summaries is somewhat different from one that people outside the industry might use.

Better communication with patients – as well as better internal comms between trial operations stakeholders – is a key element for improving results.