Abstract
Provider referral is one of the most influential factors in research recruitment. To ease referral burden on providers, we adapted the Best Practice Alert (BPA) in the EPIC Electronic Health Record and assessed its utility in recruiting pediatric patients with autism spectrum disorder for the national SPARK study. During a year-long surveillance, 1203 (64.0%) patients were Interested in SPARK and 223 enrolled. Another 754 participants not recruited via the BPA also enrolled; 35.5% of these participants completed their participation compared to 58.3% of BPA-referred participants. Results suggest that (a) a BPA can successfully engage providers in the study-referral process and (b) families who learn about research through their providers may be more engaged and effectively retained.
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Acknowledgments
The authors express their thanks to the SPARK team at the Simons Foundation, the SPARK clinical sites, and the SPARK cohort participants. Although the authors contribute to SPARK as a clinical site (#385052, RPG-K), this project was initiated by the authors without specific or supplemental funding. The sponsors played no role in designing, executing, or writing up the results of this analysis. We are also grateful to Ms. Robin Barton and the EPIC-support team at Texas Children’s Hospital for their collaboration in developing the BPA and exporting the data described in this study. This work was partially supported by the Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (1U54 HD083092) at Baylor College of Medicine.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by ARS, KLA, GFD, and RPG. The first draft of the manuscript was written by ARS and KLA, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Robin P. Goin-Kochel has served as a paid consultant in the design of clinical trials for Yamo Pharmaceuticals. All other authors have no known conflicts of interest to disclose.
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The research reported herein was approved by the Internal Review Board (IRB) of Baylor College of Medicine. Human participants were involved and the IRB approved a waiver of informed consent because of the chartreview methodology.
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Simon, A.R., Ahmed, K.L., Limon, D.L. et al. Utilization of a Best Practice Alert (BPA) at Point-of-Care for Recruitment into a US-Based Autism Research Study. J Autism Dev Disord 53, 359–369 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-022-05444-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-022-05444-y