In today’s competitive and complex research environment, professional patients—individuals who enroll in multiple clinical trials either simultaneously or back-to-back—pose one of the greatest threats to data integrity, subject safety, and trial success. These individuals often participate for financial gain or repeated access to investigational therapies, disregarding protocol requirements such as washout periods or exclusion criteria.
The impact is serious:
- Data distortion — Inflated placebo responses and unreliable efficacy or safety results
- Safety risks — Overlapping exposure to investigational products, potentially leading to masked or compounded adverse events
- Operational delays — Protocol deviations, re-enrollments, and extended timelines
- Increased costs — Additional monitoring, data cleaning, and potential trial failures
Why Professional Patients Are Hard to Detect
Most sponsors, CROs, and research sites can only see their own trial data. Without a cross-sponsor, cross-therapeutic perspective, professional patients can move between sites, sponsors, and even therapeutic areas undetected.
Even when detected at screening, some professional patients reappear later—during treatment, follow-up, or in open-label extensions—posing risks throughout the research lifecycle.
Verified Clinical Trials: The Only Global Solution
For more than a decade, Verified Clinical Trials (VCT) has served as the world’s only comprehensive global research subject database designed to detect and prevent professional and duplicate subjects in real time.
VCT checks all the boxes:
- ✅ Global reach — Used in North America, Europe, Asia, and beyond
- ✅ Cross-sponsor and cross-therapeutic detection — Across all phases of research
- ✅ All phases, all major therapeutic areas — From Phase I to Phase IV, including high-risk areas like CNS, obesity, dermatology, respiratory, and vaccines
- ✅ Real-time subject screening — At the time of screening and throughout the trial
- ✅ Regulatory alignment — Supports ICH E6(R3) GCP risk mitigation requirements
- ✅ Excellent ROI — Reduced deviations, cleaner data, faster timelines, and safer studies
Beyond Screening: Continuous Protection
Professional patient risk doesn’t end on Day 1. VCT provides ongoing protection:
- During treatment — Detects concurrent enrollment in other trials
- In follow-up phases — Prevents premature re-entry into new studies
- In open-label extensions — Ensures subjects aren’t exposing themselves to multiple investigational drugs
Integrating VCT Into Your Clinical Trials
Eliminating professional patients is not optional—it’s a necessity for trial success. VCT is easily integrated into sponsor and CRO workflows, with minimal site burden and immediate measurable benefit. It’s also scalable, making it ideal for both single-protocol deployments and enterprise-level adoption.
The Bottom Line
There is no other solution like Verified Clinical Trials.
- Only VCT provides a global, cross-sponsor, cross-therapeutic subject registry.
- Only VCT offers real-time, ongoing protection from screening through study completion.
- Only VCT delivers the proven ROI of cleaner data, improved subject safety, reduced deviations, and faster timelines—worldwide.
Don’t let professional patients jeopardize your trial’s success.
Contact Verified Clinical Trials today to learn how we can protect your studies and your investment—across the globe, across all phases, in most therapeutic indications.
