Implementation and Evaluation of Automated, Online Study Recruitment from Computerised Medical Records in a Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network.

Infectious intestinal disease (IID) is a syndrome consisting of diarrhoea and vomiting symptoms linked to a causative pathogen. The Third Study of IID (IID3) will report its incidence in the community within the UK and assess how it has changed since the second IID study (IID2) in 2012. We implemented an automated, online patient recruitment process within a national sentinel surveillance network and compared its performance versus IID2 in terms of: Patient recruitment rates and demographic characteristics of recruited participants. We utilised a text messaging system (TMS) running off a computerised medical record systems (CMR) application programme interface (API). Demographic analysis showed that the majority of those recruited to IID3/IID2 studies were >65 years and female. However, the recruitment of participants of non-white ethnicity was statistically significantly different between IID3/IID2. Further work is required to improve recruitment in the younger patient demographic and in ethnic minority populations.