This article is the fourth instalment in our five-part series evaluating the return on investment of Home Trial Support (HTS). If you missed our previous articles, you can catch up on Part 1: Site fragility, Part 2: Patient-First and Researching in the Home, and Part 3: Retention and the Cost of Waiting.
Speeding up the trial is the value driver I am asked about most often, and it is the area where the evidence base has moved furthest since 2020.
The 2020 Perspective
In the original 2020 series, I noted that offering HTS at or before consent consistently lifted recruitment by at least 60 per cent, and often by 100 per cent or more in complex studies. The mechanism was straightforward: lowering participation barriers – such as travel, time off work, and childcare – shifts the balance so more patients say yes. Faster enrolment means earlier milestone completion, securing critical revenue ahead of patent expiry or reaching a decisive go/no-go milestone sooner.
However, I also noted honestly at the time that our models were just that – models. The hard, cross-portfolio data to prove this impact conclusively did not yet exist.
Where It Stands Today
That caveat no longer holds. Today, we can attach verified numbers to trial speed – drawn directly from MRN’s delivered portfolio rather than theoretical projections.
We evaluated every central nervous system (CNS) and neuromuscular disease study MRN has run, measuring our delivered recruitment rate against published benchmarks for traditional investigator sites in the identical indications. Across ten therapeutic areas with published comparator data, the recruitment acceleration achieved purely through passive site referrals – with no external media campaigns – is clear:
| Therapeutic Area | Recruitment Speed-up | Recruitment Time Saved |
|---|---|---|
| NMOSD | 3.17× | 69% |
| Autoimmune encephalopathy | 1.83× | 45% |
| Duchenne muscular dystrophy | 1.77× | 44% |
| Wilson’s disease | 1.73× | 42% |
| Multiple sclerosis | 1.66× | 40% |
| Parkinson’s disease | 1.41× | 29% |
| ATTR polyneuropathy | 1.40× | 29% |
| Myasthenia gravis | 1.40× | 29% |
| Alzheimer’s disease | 1.33× | 25% |
| Angelman syndrome | 1.20× | 17% |
| Average (10 Areas) / Median | 1.69× / 1.46× | ~41% median |
Source: MRN delivered recruitment across its neuromuscular and CNS portfolio, measured against published per-site benchmarks; MRN Salesforce portfolio, June 2026, re-checked August 2026.
Across the portfolio, the average speed-up is 1.69-fold, with a median of 1.46. In operational terms, integrating MRN support shortens recruitment timelines by between a sixth and two-thirds, delivering a median time saving of over 40 per cent.
Independent Validation
This acceleration is no longer corroborated solely by our internal figures. In 2023, DiMasi and colleagues at the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development published an independent assessment of decentralised clinical trial methodologies.
Their findings revealed that applying decentralised methods across Phase 2 and Phase 3 programmes generates approximately $20 million in net value per drug entering Phase 2 – representing a roughly seven-fold return on investment. Crucially, the Tufts analysis demonstrated that this financial value flows overwhelmingly from compressed timelines.