National Insititute of Health/National Cancer Institute
location
Washington, District of Columbia, United States
bio
Eileen Dimond is a nurse consultant in the Division of Cancer Prevention. She works with the NCI community oncology programs and the sites that form the community network across the U.S. and in Hawaii with a focus on clinical trial infrastructure and implementation in the community. (From http://prevention.cancer.gov/about-dcp/staff-search/eileen-dimond-rn-ms)
Holly Massett is a Senior Behavioral Science Analyst in the Clinical Trials Operations and Informatics Branch in Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program (CTEP). Within CTEP, she applies her expertise to support NCI’s early and late phase clinical trial network systems, including the development and application of systematic accrual practices to aid challenging trials, evaluation of NCI’s Central IRB (CIRB) pilot program, and preparation for the 2014 launch of CTEP’s National Clinical Trial Network. (from http://ctep.cancer.gov/branches/pio/bios/massett.htm)
key insights
Different institutions may track accrual rates differently. If you are measuring accrual or using it as a metric, be sure to understand what goes into the institution's calculation of its accrual rate. Are all trials included, or do they exclude certain types of trials? (For example, an institution may include correlative/biospecimen trials in their accrual count in the same way they would include a treatment trial.)
Patients Like Me (https://www.patientslikeme.com/) is an interesting new resource for patients to connect, learn about treatment options, and even impact clinical trial design. It's an innovative, patient-centered approach to increasing accrual.
AccrualNet is a key resource to learn more about initiatives, research, and innovation in accrual. See https://accrualnet.cancer.gov/.
For many projects, there is meaningful data that could be collected to demonstrate a change based on the intervention. Depending on the organization or context in which a competitor tests an idea, there may already be data that the competitor can use to show the "beginning state," before he/she implemented a solution. Competitors should talk to any partners to determine what data they already collect that could be relevant.
Scalability, or the ability to apply the idea to different contexts and grow the solution, is an important component to these projects.
