8 Patient Recruitment Companies Advancing Clinical Trial Diversity in 2026

Trial populations that don't reflect the demographics of the disease they're studying can limit how well results generalize to the patients who will eventually take an approved treatment, and a specific group of patient recruitment providers has built its work specifically around closing that gap. This kind of trial recruitment vendor typically pairs community-level trust-building — partnerships with faith organizations, HBCUs, and local advocacy groups — with data tools like spatial epidemiology or predictive analytics to identify where underrepresented populations live and which outreach channels will reach them. The approach differs from general-purpose recruitment in that community relationships, not advertising reach, are usually the primary asset.

The patient recruitment companies below, headquartered mostly in the United States with one in Nigeria, are listed in no particular order. Between them, these companies and providers cover community engagement platforms, spatial-epidemiology-driven patient identification, minority- and woman-owned recruitment agencies, and site management organizations built around expanding therapeutic access in underserved regions.

Acclinate

Acclinate runs NOWINCLUDED, a community engagement platform for people of color that the company says has grown to roughly 100,000 engaged members, paired with e-DICT, a predictive analytics engine trained on that community data to forecast a population's likelihood of trial participation. Founded in 2020 and based in Birmingham, Alabama, the company closed a $7 million Series A round led by Cencora Ventures with participation from Labcorp, and expanded its Birmingham headcount by 25 positions that same year. In one published case, Acclinate's approach produced a 3.8-times increase in African American participants pre-screened for an Alzheimer's study compared with a partner's prior recruitment efforts. The company builds trust through what it calls community activation points, including HBCU presidents, faith-based organizations, and elected officials.

Antidote

Antidote runs Antidote Match, a clinical trial search engine embedded across a network the company describes as spanning more than 300 partner sites, matching patients to trials using structured eligibility criteria and proprietary algorithms. Founded in 2010 as TrialReach and rebranded as Antidote in 2016, the company is headquartered in North Miami Beach, Florida, with additional offices in New York and London. A 2022 partnership with OneStudyTeam paired Antidote's patient-matching technology with OneStudyTeam's enrollment analytics, aimed at giving sponsors visibility into both who is being recruited and who is missing from a trial's funnel. The company has raised more than $57 million across a Series D round from investors including Octopus Ventures and the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund.

CHMConnect

CHMConnect is a Tampa-based platform built by patient advocates, caregivers, community leaders, and physicians with a stated combined 20-plus years of experience connecting people of color to clinical trial and healthcare resources. The organization positions itself around giving People of Color a voice in their own healthcare, encouraging individuals to share their health experiences alongside information about relevant clinical trials and disease education. CHMConnect collects registration, health-interest, and research-interest information from members as part of its outreach and support programs. The platform emphasizes privacy protections for the personal and health information members share when engaging with its services.

Legacy Health Strategies

Legacy Health Strategies is a consultancy built around what it calls equity-centered patient engagement, offering services spanning recruitment and retention strategy, trial-ready community building, and patient engagement plans for pharmaceutical R&D teams. Based in West Newton, Massachusetts, the company works to build relationships within communities of color and gather insights directly from people living with a condition of interest, rather than running recruitment campaigns on its own. Legacy's consulting approach is designed to combine a sponsor's internal team knowledge with the firm's own community relationships to design engagement programs. The company positions its work as a bridge connecting sponsors to the specific patient populations they aim to serve, rather than a standalone recruitment vendor.

M&B Sciences

M&B Sciences runs NeighborhoodTrials, a web and mobile platform that generates neighborhood-specific study pages, built on the company's geocoded database of more than 3.5 million healthcare providers and its expertise in spatial epidemiology. The San Diego-based, African American, woman-owned firm reports it has connected more than 30,000 patients to clinical trials and achieves an 85 percent higher digital click-through rate than the industry average. The company's 2024 acquisition of Clara Health, a private-equity-backed patient recruitment firm, expanded its recruitment infrastructure alongside its existing 50-seat patient engagement and survey center. M&B draws on a network of more than 400 neighborhood-level community and faith-based partners for outreach, and also offers minority investigator recruitment and training services.

PatientWing

PatientWing grew out of VitalTrax, a clinical trial software company founded by Zikria Syed in Philadelphia in 2017, and has since focused specifically on recruiting patients for rare diseases and difficult-to-recruit conditions. The company is a certified Minority-owned Business Enterprise and part of the Pledge 1% movement, donating a share of its time and profits to local Philadelphia nonprofits and international organizations. PatientWing's diverse-enrollment approach begins by engaging community outreach organizations and interviewing patients from underrepresented groups directly about their experiences with a condition before building recruitment materials. The company has said it supported roughly 50 percent of screenings for at least one large US study, according to figures it has published, and trains its project teams in cultural sensitivity for diverse patient communication.

Trial Equity

Trial Equity was founded in 2023 in Miami with a mission built directly around FDA and European Medicines Agency guidance on clinical trial diversity planning. The company cites FDA data showing that racial and ethnic minorities make up nearly 40 percent of the US population but only about 5 percent of clinical trial participants, framing this gap as the specific problem its recruitment infrastructure is meant to address. Trial Equity positions itself as a catalyst focused on ensuring that medicines are tested for safety and effectiveness across the full range of people who will eventually use them. As a newer entrant founded in 2023, the company's public track record and case studies are still limited compared with more established diversity-focused recruitment firms.

Bispharm Clinical

Bispharm Clinical is a site management organization based in Gwarinpa, Nigeria, coordinating patient recruitment, regulatory compliance, and clinical monitoring for sponsors and CROs running trials across Nigeria and West Africa. Founded in 2022, the company frames its core mission around expanding therapeutic access to diverse patient populations across urban, rural, and hard-to-reach communities in the region. Bispharm's recruitment services include developing outreach and marketing strategies specific to local communities, alongside patient enrollment tracking and reporting for sponsors. The company operates under ICH-GCP-compliant standards and staffs its own team of clinical research associates and regulatory affairs managers to support trial delivery in the region.

Explore the full Patient Recruitment landscape

The companies above represent a portion of a much larger field.

Diligent's platform includes over 730 Patient Recruitment Vendors, with Vendor qualification data available on demand. Talk to our team about accessing qualification data for this category.

This article is intended as an informational overview of vendors operating in this space. Inclusion on this list does not constitute an endorsement, recommendation, or qualification by Diligent.