Advancing Digital Recruitment Support Together

How can potentially eligible study participants be identified more efficiently using routinely collected clinical data, and how can study teams be better supported in the recruitment process? These questions were at the heart of a joint workshop on digital recruitment support, held in Berlin on 11 September 2026. The Prescreening Team of the NUM Study Network (NUM SN) at ZMI played a key role in the conception and organization of the workshop.

The workshop brought together representatives from the Data Integration Centers (DIZ) and the NUM Study Network to pool existing experience and discuss common requirements for cross-site recruitment support. The discussions built on previous work and experience from MIRACUM.

A particular focus was placed on the requirements of the DIZ sites for recruitment support as well as on existing local prescreening solutions. Several sites presented their approaches and provided insights into their architectures, data foundations, interfaces, functionalities, and practical implementation experience.

During a subsequent interactive working-group session, participants explored three key topics in greater depth: the development of a common reference architecture, the requirements for a reference implementation while taking existing local solutions into account, and the prerequisites that studies need to meet to enable automated prescreening. A key objective was to bring together existing experience and solutions, leverage synergies across sites, and advance interoperable approaches rather than developing parallel, isolated solutions.

For the NUM SN Prescreening Team at ZMI, the workshop represents an important step towards the continued development of sustainable digital recruitment support. The jointly developed results and the needs identified by the participating sites will now be taken forward and further refined together with the partners involved.

We would like to thank MIRACUM for funding the workshop.