Study start-up

What does Study start-up mean in clinical research?

Study start-up covers site identification, site selection and the work needed to activate each site: confidentiality agreements, feasibility, contract and budget negotiation, IRB approval, essential documents and protocol training. In a Tufts CSDD survey of more than 400 pharmaceutical, biotech and CRO companies, start-up averaged 5 to 6 months in total, and cycle times were faster for repeat sites than for new ones.^⁠[1]

The same survey found that CROs completed all site-related start-up activities 6 to 11 weeks faster than sponsors.^⁠[1] Every month in start-up is a month without enrollment, which is why CTTI recommends moving recruitment planning upstream, in parallel with trial design.^⁠[2]

Practical note: recruitment tools add their own start-up steps. Run them in parallel with contracts and budget rather than after:

• Security review and a signed BAA.
• EHR access approval and interface setup.
• IRB review of outreach scripts, texts and AI disclosure language.
• Workflow configuration with the coordinators. Implementation shows how Bond's setup runs.

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.