# Patient Recruitment Strategies for Behavioral Clinical Trials in Adults with Inflammatory Bowel Diseases: An Analysis of the ADEPT (Addressing Disability Effectively with Psychosocial Telehealth) Randomized Controlled Trial

## TL;DR

This study shows that using digital messages from medical records is the most efficient way to recruit IBD patients for clinical trials.

## Contribution

The study introduces a novel, cost-effective digital recruitment method for IBD clinical trials.

## Key findings

- Bulk EMR messaging had the highest recruitment and response rates.
- Digital recruitment required less time and cost than in-person or hybrid methods.
- Digital health tools can improve patient recruitment for IBD trials.

## Abstract

This study evaluates the effectiveness of different methods to recruit patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) into a randomized controlled trial (RCT).

630 participants were recruited into a multicenter RCT using electronic medical record (EMR) bulk messaging, in-person study discussion with a clinician, or a hybrid method combining the above approaches.

Bulk EMR messaging alone had the highest recruitment and response rates, required the least amount of time to implement, and incurred the lowest cost as compared to the in-person and hybrid recruitment methods.

Digital health technology can enhance the recruitment of patients with IBD into randomized controlled trials.