Article | Reimagining clinical trial recruitment

Dr Ian Wood, GP and Clinical Director at Optum (formerly EMIS), explores how technology is transforming clinical trial recruitment — bridging the gap between industry demands and the realities of NHS primary care to help realise the UK government’s ambitions for a world-leading research and life sciences ecosystem.

As a clinician and UK citizen, I appreciate the increasing drive from both the NHS and UK Government to deliver faster, fairer, and more cost-effective clinical trials. Health and social care spending is now higher than in any other sector, and the government has called for £9 billion in efficiency savings. That’s a huge ask — and one that demands smarter, more sustainable ways to improve care for patients.

Embedding research into everyday care

Clinical research can be a powerful part of the solution. It drives innovation, speeds up access to new treatments, and helps bring cutting-edge care into everyday practice. But the way we recruit patients into trials hasn’t kept pace. Traditional methods — often based in specialist centres and reliant on manual outreach — are too slow, too narrow, and too resource-heavy to meet today’s needs.

To move forward, we need to rethink how research fits into the fabric of the NHS. That means making it easier for patients to take part, and for clinicians to support them — all while ensuring trials are inclusive, efficient, and grounded in the trusted relationships of primary care.

Optum’s Recruit solution is uniquely positioned to meet these needs. Integrated directly into the EMIS-X clinical system, it enables GPs to quickly find and invite eligible patients to take part in clinical trials that are relevant to their care. Using tailored searches based on study protocols, Recruit analyses patient records from consenting practices to identify those who may meet eligibility criteria for a trial. In just a few clicks, GPs can surface potential participants and send secure, personalised invitations via text or email — all from within the clinical workflow.

Driving site success

Recruit isn’t just helping to connect sponsors with eligible patients — it’s helping them plan and deliver trials more effectively from the very beginning. One of its most powerful features for industry is the feasibility service. By querying real-world patient data against protocol criteria, Recruit helps sponsors identify key areas for recruitment — and, in turn, the most suitable trial site locations. With strict measures in place to ensure the highest standards of data governance, this feasibility service supports sponsors to reduce the risk of under-recruitment and costly amendments.

Another key feature helping to address bottlenecks in trial recruitment is the Health Care Record (HCR) sharing functionality. Traditionally researchers can wait weeks — sometimes even months — to access the necessary clinical documents they need to confirm a patient’s suitability and safety for a trial. With HCR sharing, that delay can be dramatically reduced — in some cases to just minutes. This feature facilitates the secure and instant transfer of clinical records to research teams, all with the patient's explicit consent and GPs' control.

Building the future of research today

From my perspective as a GP, Recruit is a natural extension of my clinical system: intuitive, non-disruptive, and clinically and academically minded. It respects our time, compensates for our efforts, and opens the door to meaningful conversations with patients about the next frontier of care: access to cutting-edge research.

For the NHS, it delivers speed, precision, and diversity to clinical trials, reaching patients in real-world settings and helping to accelerate the adoption of new treatments. It also clearly aligns with policies on digital shifts and investing in community care.

Recruit represents the future of clinical research: embedded, data-driven, and patient-first. It turns recruitment from a barrier into a bridge — connecting research with the people and professionals who can bring it to life.

This article was prepared by Ian Wood in a personal capacity. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed by the author of this piece belong to the author and do not purport to represent the views, thoughts and opinions of Optum.