Aernoud Fiolet

39 General introduction and thesis outline PART IV: IMPROVING PRAGMATIC TRIAL CONDUCT In the fourth part of this thesis, we will focus on offering a solution to one of the inherentweaknesses of clinical research in this dayandage: the ever-increasing costs of trial conduct that pose a challenge for research on drug repurposing in particular. This Achilles’ heel of trial conduct could be overcome by using innovative methods of data collection. Firstly, we will investigate whether recruiting eligible patients for clinical research can be done more efficiently. In addition, we try to quantify the accuracy of automatically collecting the baseline demographic and medical data of participants. This is done by using a text-mining algorithm to search through routinely collected clinical data and apply conventional investigator-collected trial data as a reference standard. (Chapter 13) In order to address the complete spectrum of data collection in clinical trials, we will analyse the accuracy of this method of collecting outcome data and compare this to investigator-reported and adjudicated outcomes. (Chapter 14) PART V: GENERAL DISCUSSION AND SUMMARY As concluding considerations, we will put all the aforementioned findings into contemporary and future perspective, provide recommendations for future research, and argue how sustainable clinical research begets sustainable clinical care. (Chapter 15) The thesis ends with a summary of the previous chapters (Chapter 16) .