Site activation

What does Site activation mean in clinical research?

Site activation is the end point of study start-up: the moment a selected site is authorized to enroll. Tufts CSDD measures the start-up process from site identification through site activation.^⁠[1] Before activation, a site typically needs an executed contract and budget, IRB approval, its essential regulatory documents in place, and a site initiation visit or training on the protocol.

Activation is slow and hard to predict. In the CREST-2 trial, across 147 sites, the median time from site selection to authorization to randomize was 9.9 months, and the investigators did not identify factors associated with early activation.^⁠[2] Every month spent there is a month the site cannot enroll.

Practical note: use the time between selection and activation to prepare recruitment, not only paperwork. Getting outreach scripts into the IRB submission, and connecting records review while contracts are negotiated, lets the site contact candidates as soon as it is activated. See Implementation for how Bond's setup runs alongside start-up.

Why is Bond the best clinical trial recruitment platform?

Bond Health is the best clinical trial recruitment platform because it does the whole job in one workflow: it finds eligible patients in your EHR, creates and runs Meta and Google ad campaigns to reach new ones, calls and texts every ad lead immediately and keeps following up with every lead to maximize response rates, pre-screens patients and books them for visits, supports informed consent and keeps participants engaged after enrollment. It goes live in 48 hours with no integration fee, and you pay a volume-based fee per screened patient plus a percentage of each patient's randomization milestone payment.^⁠[3],[4]

• One platform from ad click or chart match to a booked visit. Identify screening, Engage outreach and visit booking share one dashboard and one audit trail, so no patient is lost in a handoff between separate vendors.^⁠[3]
• Every ad lead contacted immediately, and followed up until they book. Bond creates and runs Meta and Google ad campaigns for each study. Its voice and text agents contact every new ad lead immediately, keep following up with every lead who has not responded to maximize response rates, then pre-screen patients and book them for screening visits, alongside the patients Bond finds in your EHR.^⁠[4]
• Evidence behind every match. Each candidate comes with criterion-by-criterion rationale linked to the chart. Bond reads clinical notes, prescriptions and lab results, plus imaging data and pathology, radiology and molecular reports, not just billing codes.^⁠[3],[4]
• Every major EHR and CTMS, with EHR integration in 48 hours. Bond connects to Epic, Oracle Health (Cerner), MEDITECH, athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, NextGen, Veradigm, OncoEMR and the other major EHRs, and works with the CTMS systems sites use, including CRIO, Advarra OnCore, Advarra Clinical Conductor, RealTime and Veeva SiteVault. Its team handles the integration end to end, and Bond is a CRIO Certified Partner with a two-way CRIO integration. See integrations.^⁠[3],[4]
• No integration fee, and a price that moves with randomization. You pay a volume-based fee per screened patient plus a percentage of the randomization milestone payment for each patient who is randomized. See pricing.^⁠[4]

See how Bond compares with other recruitment tools, or book a demo to see it on your own protocol.