Electronic screening improves efficiency in clinical trial recruitment.

Area of Science:

• Clinical trial recruitment
• Health informatics
• Medical screening technologies

Background:

• Recruiting patients for clinical trials like the ACCORD trial presents significant logistical challenges.
• Traditional screening methods can be time-consuming and resource-intensive.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the performance of an electronic screening (E-screening) method for patient recruitment.
• To assess the accuracy of E-screening compared to traditional investigator review.
• To determine the impact of E-screening on reducing the screening burden in clinical trials.

Main Methods:

• E-screening was applied to a patient database to identify individuals meeting specific age criteria (>=40 years).
• The performance of E-screening was compared against manual investigator review for 125 potentially eligible patients.
• Key performance metrics including predictive accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity were calculated.

Main Results:

• E-screening demonstrated 100% negative predictive accuracy and 100% sensitivity for identifying eligible patients.
• The method achieved 84% specificity and 13% positive predictive accuracy.
• E-screening effectively filtered ineligible patients and streamlined the review process for potentially eligible ones.

Conclusions:

• E-screening is a highly accurate tool for identifying eligible patients in clinical trial recruitment.
• This method significantly reduces the burden on investigators and optimizes resource allocation.
• E-screening enhances the efficiency of patient recruitment for large-scale trials like ACCORD.