EHR-based Clinical Trial Alert Effects on Recruitment to a Neurology Trial across Institutions: Interim Analysis of a Randomized Controlled Study.

EHR-based, point-of-care, clinical trial alerts (CTAs) have shown promise in prior studies to improve subject recruitment rates, but those studies have had limitations of generalizability. We report here an interim analysis of a cluster randomized controlled trial of the CTA approach applied to a neurology study at a second institution to test the efficacy of the approach across institutions with a different EHR. During the first phase (4 months) of our study, the CTA significantly improved physician-generated referrals among intervention physicians vs. control physicians (35 vs. 0). Additional trends and information about the usage of CTA features have also been gleaned. These findings add to the limited evidence for the utility and generalizability of the CTA approach.