From Static Lists to Real-Time Matches: How AI Is Revolutionizing Trial Eligibility Screening

In clinical research, timing isn’t just important—it’s everything. Yet many sites and sponsors still rely on outdated recruitment methods like static prescreening lists, batch EMR queries, and manual chart reviews. These reactive approaches often miss eligible patients who fall through the cracks as clinical conditions evolve. Real-time eligibility screening for clinical trials offers a smarter, faster alternative by continuously monitoring EMR data to surface qualified participants the moment they meet protocol criteria. It’s a shift from delayed discovery to proactive enrollment.

According to a systematic review, around 80% of clinical trials fail to meet their initial enrollment timelines, and these delays can cost sponsors up to $8 million per day in lost revenue (PubMed). The solution is real-time eligibility screening, a game changer that ensures recruitment is proactive, precise, and timely.

Why the Traditional Model Falls Short

• Reactive Rather Than Proactive: Sites typically run prescreening queries weekly or monthly, meaning eligibility signals become stale.

• Resource-Intensive Processes: Coordinators manually review hundreds of charts, an inefficient and error-prone task.

• Missing Nuanced Data: Structured data fields often overlook important details found in physician notes, lab trends, or imaging reports.

• Lost Opportunities: Once patients cross critical thresholds or change care settings, they are frequently lost to the trial.

This static model wastes time and money and often fails to meet diversity or timeline metrics.

What Real-Time Eligibility Screening Actually Means

Real-time screening is more than simply speeding up processes. It involves continuous, automated monitoring of EMR data to flag eligible patients as soon as they meet study criteria.

Key features include:

• Monitoring both structured data (for example, diagnosis codes and medication orders) and unstructured data (such as physician notes and lab reports).

• Providing instant alerts when a patient qualifies, enabling immediate outreach.

• Supporting multiple protocol matches, thereby increasing reach without additional manual labor.

Instead of asking, “Who qualified last week?” sites can now ask, “Who qualifies right now?”

How AI Powers Real-Time Precision

Achieving human-level speed and accuracy requires more than simple queries—it requires robust AI. BEKplatform leverages:

• Natural Language Processing (NLP) to extract key information from free-text notes.

• A clinical ontology covering more than 24 million terms and synonyms, ensuring a nuanced match between patient data and protocol criteria.

• EMR-agnostic integration, which works seamlessly with systems like Epic, Cerner, and Allscripts.

This approach allows researchers to identify patients based on a comprehensive picture of their clinical profile, including lab trends, comorbidities, history, and clinical observations rather than just billing codes.

Real-World Impact: Faster Enrollment, More Qualified Matches

Sites using BEKhealth have reported:

• 10× more qualified patients identified compared to traditional chart reviews.

• 2× faster enrollment timelines, which helps reduce costly delays.

• Hundreds of hours saved on chart review, freeing staff to focus on higher-value tasks.

These improvements not only help sites meet enrollment goals but also keep sponsors on schedule and within budget. Delays in enrollment, costing between $600,000 and $8 million per day, directly threaten trial viability.

Why Now Is the Right Time

• Complex Protocols: Increasingly complex protocols demand more criteria and tighter eligibility windows.

• Richer EMR Data: Although EMRs offer a wealth of patient information, manual extraction cannot keep up.

• Diversity Goals: Proactively identifying underrepresented patients is essential to meeting diversity mandates.

• Accelerated Timelines: With trial timelines shrinking, delays are no longer tolerable.

Real-time eligibility screening is not just a nice-to-have; it is a strategic imperative.

Make Time Work for You

Static reports no longer cut it. Real-time eligibility screening empowers sites and sponsors to act immediately on eligibility signals, enroll patients in time-sensitive windows, and reduce screen failures and wasted effort.

Let BEKhealth show you how to find the right patients at the right time—before the opportunity slips away.