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Meeting the Challenges of Patient Recruitment

A Role for Electronic Health Records

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Abstract

The recruitment rate of adult patients into clinical trials continues to be low. There are a number of barriers to recruitment and, for the most part, these can be classified as patient-, physician-, organisation- or protocolrelated. For practical reasons the process of trial recruitment can be divided into three steps: awareness of the trial, assessment of patient eligibility and the decision to participate. Two key strategies to improve patient recruitment are related to (i) knowledge, information and data management, and (ii) changing the behaviour of physicians and patients. Patient recruitment strategies cover individual services (e.g. call centre, web-based outreach campaigns) or integrated services (e.g. provided by recruitment companies). Unfortunately, there is only limited and inconclusive evidence from randomised or quasi-randomised trials comparing different recruitment strategies.

The integration of electronic health records (EHRs) into clinical trials has major potential to increase recruitment rates, as demonstrated by a small number of recent studies. However, there are prerequisites for the successful application of EHR systems in clinical trials, including the provision of adequate patient data, availability of technical solutions from vendors and dual operability between the worlds of medical care and clinical research; changes in the attitudes of physicians and patients are also required. Nevertheless it should be borne in mind that patient recruitment is a complex process and successful strategies are likely to require several complementary approaches in order to achieve the goal of improved enrolment rates.

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Acknowledgements

No sources of funding were used to assist in the preparation of this manuscript. There are no conflicts of interest for the authors. Dr Q. Yang, Heinrich-Heine-University, Duesseldorf, Germany, provided writing assistance for this manuscript.

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  1. Coordination Centre for Clinical Trials, Medical Faculty, Heinrich-Heine-University, Moorenstrasse 5, 40225, Duesseldorf, Germany

    Christian Ohmann & Wolfgang Kuchinke

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  1. Christian Ohmann
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Correspondence to Christian Ohmann.

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Ohmann, C., Kuchinke, W. Meeting the Challenges of Patient Recruitment. Int J Pharm Med 21, 263–270 (2007). https://doi.org/10.2165/00124363-200721040-00002

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