Does Perceived Digital Tool Adoption Help Minority Patient Accrual and Retention Compared to All Patient Accrual and Retention for Clinical Trials: Testing a United States Sample?

Abstract

Using a complete-data sample of 80 online respondents from the United States (US) Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI) Clinical Research Innovation (CRI) listserv, this study tested two research questions, RQ1 - does perceived Digital Tool Adoption (DTA) help minority patient accrual compared to all patient accrual for clinical trials? and, RQ2, does perceived DTA help minority patient retention compared to all patient retention for clinical trials? An on-line anonymous survey was completed. Single-item Likert scales were used to measure respondent perceptions of the study variables. Neither research question was supported, i.e., statistically significant study results indicated that DTA does not help minority patient accrual versus all patient accrual and DTA also does not help minority retention versus all patient retention. Results also indicated that IF accrued, minority patients are more likely to be retained for clinical trials than all patients. This paper addresses an emerging issue for perceived clinical trial cancer patient management in the US, i.e., as DTA continues to evolve, making sure minority patient accrual and retention is done as effectively by cancer-treating organizations as all patient accrual and retention. Cancer-treating organizations need to constantly monitor that their DTAs are as applicable to minority patients as all patients, and if not collect feedback for necessary change.