For sponsors and CROs, patient recruit­ment has become a moving target. Re­cruitment tactics are shifting from the use of traditional, centralized advertising to digital and online media. Outreach strate­gies have become more targeted and com­panies are moving toward leveraging net­works of electronic medical records (EMRs) and other data to support more effective recruitment for clinical trials. Yet there are mixed opinions about the value of digital or social media campaigns. While drug development executives ex­pect EMRs and health records to play a major role in patient recruitment within five years, according to the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development (CSDD), much of the data needed to identify eligi­ble clinical trial participants doesn’t exist in EMRs. The systems weren’t designed for simplifying searches across files.

 Survey shows companies aim to increase range of patient data in clinical trials

 Most life sciences companies plan to significantly step up their use of real-world data sources over the next three years, according to a new survey by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. In the second report from the 2017 eClin­ical Landscape Study, one of the largest, most in-depth surveys of clinical data man­agement professionals, 97% of companies polled said they plan to increase their use of at least one source of clinical data to im­prove the accuracy of their decisions in the development process.

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