Homecare Visits in Clinical Trials?

If clinical study investigations are carried out at home, there are many advantages – for both sponsors and patients. Not only because the inclusion of immobile or seriously ill patient groups is improved or at times even made possible in the first place, but even patients living busy lives despite their disease, for whom the site visits of a classic study participation takes up a significant chunk of their lives, could profit from homecare visits. Further strengths of homecare visits in clinical studies are the lower drop-out rate, higher patient compliance and a significantly increased patient satisfaction.

If the patient cannot come to the study site, the study site will come to the patient. The demand for homecare visits could be outlined so briefly, since homecare visits in clinical studies lend themselves to study populations that

• are severely ill and as a consequence their ability to travel is limited,
• suffer from a rare disease and therefore live far away from the site that specializes in that disease,
• are still very young and thus the frequent journeys to the study site would cause excessive stress,
• live busy lives and do not want to give the disease the time that would be further limited by the site visits.

Homecare visits are thus a supplementary offer to the visits carried out at the study site. During homecare visits, for example, blood collections could be carried out for determining safety parameters, infusion bags could be changed or injections could be administered.  

There are numerous case studies on the advantages of homecare visits in clinical studies. These primarily show three advantages:

• Lower drop-out rates
• Higher patient compliance
• Increased patient satisfaction

Wenke Schult outlined the different case studies in a specialist article. The article can be

found under Publications.