Improving clinical trial accrual by streamlining the referral process

Area of Science:

• Clinical research operations
• Health informatics
• Medical innovation adoption

Background:

• Poor clinical trial accrual rates increase development costs and delay new treatments.
• Provider workload and time constraints limit awareness and utilization of investigational opportunities for patients.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and pilot a workflow for non-intrusively informing providers about relevant clinical trial opportunities for their patients.
• To enable efficient provider referrals of potential trial candidates for eligibility review.

Main Methods:

• Developed an information system to monitor institutional data and identify potentially eligible patients.
• Implemented a one-click referral mechanism for providers to connect patients with study teams.

Main Results:

• In 18 months, providers referred 11% of 1844 potentially eligible patients across 38 trials.
• An estimated 79 patients were accrued, with boosted accrual rates for several trials.
• User surveys indicated general satisfaction with the system.

Conclusions:

• A novel workflow effectively addressed provider time constraints, improving clinical trial accrual.
• This approach facilitates patient access to investigational treatments and may be particularly useful for cross-disciplinary referrals.