Development of an electronic health record-based Clinical Trial Alert system to enhance recruitment at the point of care.

Clinical trials are essential to the progress of medical science. Physician participation in trial recruitment is vital, but most do not participate. Few approaches to improve physician participation in trial recruitment have been described or proven successful. Previously described approaches have largely relied on locally developed technology or been designed for use in specialized settings, thereby limiting their generalizability. We describe the design, operation and initial testing of a new Clinical Trial Alert (CTA) system built upon the existing capabilities of a commercial EHR in use across a large academic healthcare system. Given the trend toward implementation of similarly capable EHRs in institutions engaged in clinical research, this approach should be widely applicable and may represent a solution to the common problem of inadequate clinical trial recruitment. Further study of this system is ongoing.