ideasIdea
Every patient is asked once at diagnosis whether researchers may contact them
At diagnosis, people would be asked a single question: may we contact you about research that fits your cancer? Those who say yes would be findable by trial teams without repeated cold approaches.
A health-system-level consent-to-contact register, recorded in the EHR at diagnosis, allowing approved trial teams to approach registered patients whose records match a protocol. The UK's Be Part of Research and Scotland's SHARE register are precedents; the idea is to make the question a mandatory element of cancer diagnosis pathways and to link the register to matching tools.
Hypothesis
Health systems with a diagnosis-time consent-to-contact register will approach eligible patients more often and enrol more, particularly in trials for rare or biomarker-defined cancers where prospective identification matters most.
Rationale
Most patients say they would join a trial if asked; the bottleneck is being asked. A register moves identification from chance encounters to systematic search.
What would test it
Compare trial approach and enrolment rates between regions with and without a mandatory register, adjusting for trial availability.
Maturity
being tested at scale
Who has to act
policy
Cost to try
Small (under $1M)
Years to first evidence
2
Bottlenecks it attacks
- Trials enrol too few, too slowly · Fewer than one in ten adults with cancer joins a trial. Trials close for lack of patients, not lack of ideas.