A European inventory of data elements for patient recruitment.

Introduction: In the last few years much work has been conducted in creating systems that support clinical trials for example by utilizing electronic health record data. One of these endeavours is the Electronic Health Record for Clinical Research project (EHR4CR). An unanswered question that the project aims to answer is which data elements are most commonly required for patient recruitment.

Methods: Free text eligibility criteria from 40 studies were analysed, simplified and elements were extracted. These elements where then added to an existing inventory of data elements for protocol feasibility.

Results: We simplified and extracted data elements from 40 trials, which resulted in 1170 elements. From these we created an inventory of 150 unique data elements relevant for patient identification and recruitment with definitions and referenced codes to standard terminologies.

Discussion: Our list was created with expertise from pharmaceutical companies. Comparisons with related work shows that identified concepts are similar. An evaluation of the availability of these elements in electronic health records is still ongoing. Hospitals that want to engage in re-use of electronic health record data for research purposes, for example by joining networks like EHR4CR, can now prioritize their effort based on this list.