E-recruitment based clinical research: notes for Research Ethics Committees/Institutional Review Boards

Patient recruitment is a critical point of today’s clinical research. Several proposals have been made for improving it, but the effectiveness of these measures is actually uncertain.\r\nThe use of Internet (e-recruitment) could represent a great chance to improve patient enrolment, even though the effectiveness of this implementation\r\nis not so evident.\r\nE-recruitment could bring some advantages, such as better interaction between clinical research demand and clinical research supply, time and resources optimization, and reduction of data entry errors. It raises some issues too,\r\nsuch as sampling errors, validity of informed consent, and protection of privacy. Research Ethics Committees/Institutional Review Boards should consider these critical points.\r\nThe paper deals with Internet recruitment for clinical research. It also attempts to provide Research Ethics Committees/Institutional Review Boards with notes for assessing e-recruitment based clinical protocols.