Leveraging the electronic health record patient portal to enhance clinical trial recruitment.

387 Background: The increasing prevalence of video/remote visits in the clinical setting has posed researchers with unique challenges related to clinical trial recruitment. Without the ability to speak to potential participants face to face, researchers rely on making phone calls which are frequently screened, declined, or never returned. Patients contacted in this way may never access the trials and care opportunities available to them. Electronic health record (EHR) patient portals, such as MyChart (Epic), allow individuals to access their medical records and communicate with their providers via instant messaging. This EHR tool may offer researchers a new method of participant recruitment to clinical trials. Methods: An electronic report, built around the Five- or Ten-Year Colonoscopy Trial’s (FORTE/NRG-CC005) eligibility criteria, was used to identify potential study participants. The local research team then generated an investigator endorsed, IRB-approved introductory script to send to patients via the MyChart instant messaging function. Once delivered, the message status was monitored to determine whether the patient had opened/read the introductory message. Patients who responded and expressed interest in trial participation were then sent additional information through MyChart and asked to schedule a time to speak to research staff over the phone. Results: In the two years that the FORTE trial was opened at our institution (October 2021 to August 2023), prior to implementing this MyChart practice, the research team attempted to contact 108 eligible patients via outreach phone calls. Of the 108, only 10 were reached by the study team and 0 consented to the trial. Between August 2023 and May 2024, 28 eligible patients were sent the MyChart script resulting in a response rate of 85.7% (24/28). Of the respondents, 20.8% (5/24) declined participation and did not want additional study information; 41.7% (10/24) requested more information but later declined participation, and 37.5% (9/24) expressed interest in trial participation. To date, of these 9 interested patients, 4 have enrolled to FORTE, and 5 are in the screening process. Conclusions: Preliminary observations suggest that recruiting patients to clinical trials through an electronic health record portal is an effective tool for enhancing enrollment. Further research is warranted to prospectively evaluate this recruitment strategy.