The MRN were involved in selecting and setting up 34 sites within the UK for a late phase rheumatoid arthritis study, the remit being to identify and utilise a wide spread site base, covering all geographical regions and reaching into trial naive sites where required. In order to do this, sites with little or no trial experience were considered, as well as sites with little or no research resource (ie. sites who would not normally be chosen).

Total study duration was six months per patient and involved two hour infusions once per month on site. With the other assessment and QOL measures involved, each patient visit was in the region of four hours and had to be conducted within dedicated infusion suites where the patients could be treated comfortably.

In total 14 sites utilised MRN site support and 20 worked with their own resource; over a six month period the MRN resourced sites recruited a total of 46 patients and those without MRN resourced recruited a total of 62. The MRN sites recruited on average 3.3 patients per site and the non MRN sites an average of 3.1 per site.

The non MRN sites performed better initially, which would be expected of sites utilising internal staff who already know their patient population; as recruitment progresses however the MRN supported sites perform better due to the ongoing targeted search for patients. These figures are especially powerful considering these sites would probably never have been included if the resource hadn’t been provided and if they had, the figures would have been considerably lower.