Presentation (CTI)

OBJECTIVES: Clinical trial patient recruitment typically draws on patient-level encounter data to identify healthcare providers (HCPs). As socio-economic factors realign HCP practice patterns, traditional methods for HCP-based patient recruitment cannot meet patient targeting goals. Our study evaluates provider-facility-system relationships to demonstrate the importance of contextual affiliation data on patient recruitment. Using synthetic and real-world data, we show that including HCP employment, facility affiliation and health system network relationships expand relevant HCP pools beyond patient-level targeting.
METHODS: Synthetic clinical trial scenarios were created across three therapeutic areas (TA): Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), Refractory multiple sclerosis (RMS), and Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). Cohorts included 10,000 patients per TA. HCPs were included where a cohort patient was treated in 2025 within predefined specialty groups. Trial sites were defined as the top three hospital organizations per cohort based on HCP employment. A baseline pool included HCPs employed at the trial site. Affiliation-based expansion was evaluated across relationship tiers: (1) employment, (2) employment with specialty alignment, (3) facility affiliation with the trial site, and (4) system-level affiliation. For each tier, eligible encounters and unique patients were quantified.
RESULTS: Across all TAs, stepwise expansion from trial-site employment to broader affiliation relationships increased the recruitment-relevant HCP universe. Relative to the employment baseline, expanding specialty-aligned expansion increased eligible encounters across cohorts, with the largest gains in T1DM. Including HCPs affiliated with the trial site increased cohort capture by ~10% in RMS and ~24% in TNBC. Adding facility and system affiliations produced additional incremental gains, approaching broad coverage in RMS and expansion in T1DM. Across indications, successive affiliation tiers identified operationally connected HCPs not visible through employment-only targeting.
CONCLUSIONS: Affiliation-based information identifies additional recruitment-relevant HCPs with meaningful proximity to trial sites. The impact varies by therapeutic context: specialty-anchored conditions show smaller but targeted gains, whereas broadly distributed cohorts benefit from substantial expansion.