Smarter Clinical Trial Recruitment that Delivers Faster Site Enrollment

Dennis Akkaya 18 Sep 2025

10 mins read

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Why does clinical trial recruitment drain site resources?

Recruiting eligible and suitable patients is the most resource-intensive task for a clinical research site. Research coordinators and principal investigators spend hours chasing referrals that don’t work out, missing crucial enrollment deadlines along the way.

The numbers not only show delayed milestones but also increasing site sustainability risk.

Trial protocols are becoming ever more complex, with stricter eligibility criteria driving unqualified referrals, higher screen-fail rates and wasted coordinator hours in an industry already dealing with high staff turnover. Traditional patient recruitment vendors may offer volume, but without workflows optimized for sites, they add burden rather than relief.

Meanwhile, clinical trial awareness among physicians and patients remains patchy. Registries often show outdated trial information and sites are still battling way too many systems with fragmented referral inflow from patient advocacy groups, partner networks, external platforms, and even email. The result is inefficient manual follow-up, poor forecasting and plenty of preventable drop-offs.

Sites can benefit from a unified referral system that integrates with EHRs, streamlines eligibility checks, and delivers medically qualified research participants at scale – giving clinical research coordinators control and confidence to meet their enrollment targets.

 

What is the value of adopting a united referral management system with AI pre-screening?

myTomorrows has built a secure, intuitive referral management system designed to streamline and centralize referrals. By connecting sites, community hospitals, referring physicians and patients through a single transparent system, we eliminate fragmentation and accelerate recruitment.

Coupled with our hands-on patient navigation support, early users have already reported measurable improvements in enrollment and retention rates as well as substantial reductions in screen-failures and shorter recruitment cycle times.

Sites that partner with us, not only benefit from streamlined referrals and AI-powered pre-screening, but also from enhanced patient retention through personalized patient navigation support, ensuring qualified and suitable patients are well-informed prior to enrollment. This helps reduce drop-off rates and contributes to more consistent trial outcomes once a trial is underway.

By distributing secure referral links with pre-screening capability, sites can standardize medical intake while eliminating manual email exchanges and back-and-forth coordination. This streamlines the referral process and increases both the volume and quality of incoming candidates.

 

Collaborate on one trial referral management system

Sites can centralize internal and external referrals in one platform with clear oversight and accurate reporting data. With the ability to integrate with existing CTMS and EMR systems, the platform expedites referral workflows, enabling teams to collaborate and manage daily recruitment tasks on-platform, with the option to securely and directly communicate with referring physicians.

 

Automate clinical trial pre-screening with AI precision

Despite proven efficiency gains and accuracy, our recent survey highlighted that many healthcare professionals are not using AI for pre-screening due to unfamiliarity and uncertainty3. That’s why we have built an AI solution designed for sites, expanding on our current sponsor and stakeholder-driven offerings.

Via myTomorrows AI pre-screening, sites can rely on:

Our platform utilizes criterion-level logic to deliver explainable accurate eligibility checks, ensuring sites receive medically qualified referrals, not just based on condition or location, but on nuanced eligibility criteria embedded directly into the platform.

The value of this approach was highlighted in ASCO’s Clinical Cancer Informatics review6 which recognized LLM-driven explainable trial matching as valuable for physicians in discovery and selection of relevant clinical trials. These capabilities are already fully embedded in the myTomorrows platform, enabling sites to benefit from an ethical and compliant approach to AI pre-screening within a single trial recruitment tool.

For more complex and advanced needs, sites can further integrate EHRs, CTMS and make use of myTomorrows’ Matching API, to streamline large-scale eligibility checks and enable efficient management of trials with even the most complex eligibility criteria.

 

Widen clinical trial awareness and visibility with real-time trial status updates

Static public registries rarely reflect accurate recruitment statuses or current changes, causing confusion, delays, and missed opportunities for referring physicians, patients and sites alike.

We solve this by enabling sites to update custom trial information in real-time. For recruitment status and country/language requirements to specific documentation needs, clinical research teams can keep other stakeholders informed with the most accurate, up-to-date, and relevant details right from the start. This results in fewer misdirected or missed referrals, a reduction in workload and much-improved referral quality numbers.

Beyond increasing the visibility of site-specific trials, we also expand access by activating specialist physician networks and patient advocacy groups. This allows sites to tap into broader and more diverse patient populations that can drive clinical trial awareness and enrollment success.

 

Strengthen patient retention in clinical trials with insights and navigation support

Our multilingual Patient Navigators provide high-touch personalized support that keeps patients engaged, educated and therefore less likely to drop-off. By ensuring that only relevant informed patients enter the process, there is a reduced need for multiple pre-screen visits which lowers screen-failures and increases site and sponsor confidence. For logistically complex international or cross-border studies, this dedicated service, available across global time zones, offers increased certainty and clarity every step of the way.

Beyond patient-facing support, sites also benefit from smarter workflows and data visibility about which lead sources deliver the most qualified referrals. This helps to drive downstream efficiencies and boost retention in clinical trials by allowing teams to focus where they are most effective.

 

Connect with all stakeholders in a seamless workflow

Successful recruitment depends on stakeholder collaboration. To address limited referral visibility, fragmented communication and inefficient coordination, myTomorrows unites all stakeholders digitally, each with a separate secure environment, on a single integrated platform.

This approach elevates site performance and improves sponsor–site collaboration through transparent reporting, compliance alignment, and referral and trial visibility. This alignment reduces referral drop-offs and accelerates enrollment, transforming fragmented inputs into a coordinated recruitment engine. The result is faster patient matching, stronger site performance, and greater sponsor confidence in trial execution.

Trial recruitment challenges, impacts and solutions at a glance:

 

How does compliance and data privacy underpin our solutions?

Compliance and data protection are built into every step of our platform. Referrals are only shared once patients (or caregivers/physicians) give explicit consent. Our multi-consent flow lets them control what is shared, when and with whom. Consent can be withdrawn at any time.

We apply strict data minimization, so sites only see what’s needed to assess eligibility, with audit logs automatically tracking consent and access to keep sites inspection ready. All data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and access is limited to verified accounts. Our platform is built privacy-first and meets GDPR, HIPAA, ISO certification, SOC 2, and ICO registration standards.

This structured, consent-based approach protects patient data, streamlines site operations, and creates a registry-like pool of pre-screened candidates for future studies. Patients can stay informed, whilst sites gain a ready cohort of eligible and suitable patients.

We also embed ethical AI principles, minimizing bias, ensuring transparency, and protecting autonomy. Our platform aligns with global governance frameworks including FDA’s Good Machine Learning Practice (GMLP) principles, the EU AI Act, and the WHO’s guidance. To meet EU AI Act’s risk-based requirements, all AI-assisted decisions remain explainable and under human oversight, supporting safe deployment in high-risk healthcare settings.

 

How can sites optimize performance with medical community support?

To further support patient-centered recruitment, our medical community team partners with trial sites to alleviate operational burdens and strengthen outcomes. This collaborative approach has built strong relationships with over 320 sites and 2,600 healthcare professionals globally, enabling sites to engage more effectively with external referral partners and networks.

Through stand-alone partnership agreements, the team helps to streamline operations via our solutions and ensure compliance requirements are met. We can connect sites with specialists and community physicians to broaden patient reach. Sites also receive hands-on support with onboarding, platform referral training, and optional services such as medical record translations, ensuring they can activate and manage referrals with confidence.

As a result, patients require fewer pre-screening visits and are more engaged, while sites gain clearer visibility into referral sources and recruitment inefficiencies – insights that also strengthen collaboration with CRAs and medical monitors.

 

Summary

Patient recruitment remains one of the most critical and challenging factors in clinical trial success. We remain committed to solving that challenge as part of our wider mission to reduce barriers to pre-approval treatment access for patients. For sites, our referral management platform takes a significant step in simplifying patient access to clinical trials.

Our solution unites referral sources into a single system, supported by AI pre-screening and high-touch patient navigation, widening overall trial visibility and empowering sites to work smarter, not harder. We connect patients, sites, physicians and BioPharma together on-platform for full clarity and efficiency. With audit-ready workflows that deliver reliable recruitment performance, sites can become more attractive partners for sponsors and CROs seeking high-performing sites.

Our in-house development team continuously improves the platform based on real-world site feedback, ensuring recruitment workflows remain scalable, compliant, and patient-centered. By underpinning every step with the highest compliance and data privacy standards, all users are given the confidence and trust they need.

Through transparency, explainability, and continuous monitoring we ensure our platform aligns with evolving compliance, AI standards, and ethical expectations, meaning CRCs and PIs can reduce internal admin and focus on patients.

myTomorrows has already supported over 16,200 patients worldwide, connecting them with relevant pre-approval research opportunities locally and cross-border, and helping sites and sponsors accelerate trial success.

Speak to a member of our medical community team to discuss how to start using myTomorrows today. 

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About the author

Dennis Akkaya

Chief Commercial Officer at myTomorrows

Dennis Akkaya is the Chief Commercial Officer at myTomorrows, bringing over 20 years of experience in the BioPharma industry. He leads the company’s global commercial strategy, with a focus on accelerating patient access to treatments in development. Dennis has spent much of his career working with European biotech companies, developing deep expertise in pre-approval access programs, AI-powered clinical trial matching, and stakeholder engagement in rare disease research. A passionate advocate for the rare disease community, he regularly chairs and speaks at international events, driving thought leadership and raising awareness around unmet patient needs. Dennis holds an MSc in Finance.

 

References

View all references

[1] https://www.wcgclinical.com/insights/2024-clinical-research-site-challenges-report/

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7342338/

[3] https://mytomorrows.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Searching-for-solutions-myTomorrows-data-report-July-2025-1.pdf

[4] https://mytomorrows.com/blog/mytomorrows-updates/transforming-clinical-research/

[5] https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.07396

[6] https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/CCI-25-00071

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Dennis Akkaya 18 Sep 2025

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