ePatientFinder and athenahealth have begun a partnership to increase their network for the recruitment of patients for clinical trials.

The platform has excess to millions of patients and, using algorithms from electronic health records, ePatientFinder is able to filter the large number of patients into categories of eligibility for clinical trials. Becoming a part of athenahealth’s marketplace gives ePatientFinder access to the cloud network of more than 80,000 healthcare providers in athenas healthcare community.

"Our patient-centric approach leverages the combined power of ePatientFinder's Clinical Trial Exchange and EHR networks to create awareness of emerging clinical trial opportunities," said Tom Dorsett, CEO of ePatientFinder. "In the past, patients could only hope that they might hear or see an advertisement on a billboard, on social media, or even on the side of a bus to make them aware of clinical trial options—for which they may or may not be qualified. Through ePatientFinder, patients can learn about the clinical trials that are right for them from their own trusted physicians."

By increasing the awareness of clinical trials available to them, patients can enroll quickly to the trials that tailor to them. This saves the money usual spent on advertising and the number of patients will to participate increases because hearing of a trial from your own doctor is a much more convincing argument then seeing an ad on the side of a bus.

"An average of 86 percent of patient’s express interest in opting into the clinical trial screening process that we offer," Dorsett said. "As we continue to scale our provider network throughout the country via a growing number of partnerships with EHR companies and trial sponsors, we'll be able to help even more physicians help their patients."