Patent ID: 8494874

Claim:
A system for recruiting participants for medical research over an extended computer network, the system comprising: an input device in communication with the extended computer network; an output device in communication with the extended computer network; at least one computing device, in communication with the extended computer network, configured to implement an enhanced services server built on the same architecture as a plurality of Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems, the enhanced services server being in data communication with the plurality of EHR systems via a network connection on the extended computer network, and the plurality of EHR systems being configured to capture patient data for a plurality of patients at a plurality of corresponding healthcare provider sites in a common data format that specifies information to be collected and a format for the information to be collected, the enhanced services server being configured to transmit and receive the patient data in the common data format; at least one computing device, in communication with the extended computer network, configured to implement search functionality to search the patient data captured in the common data format by each of the plurality of EHR systems based on search criteria input with the input device and to output patient data for a plurality of qualifying patients identified as satisfying the search criteria, the search criteria being associated with clinical criteria that a patient must satisfy to qualify to participate in the medical research, and the output patient data being de-identified to hide any patient-identifying information associated with that patient data and instead identifying each of the plurality of qualifying patients according to the healthcare provider site at which the patient data for that patient was captured; at least one computing device, in communication with the extended computer network, configured to implement messaging functionality to send an electronic message via the network connection to one or more healthcare provider sites at which patient data for at least one of the plurality of qualifying patients was captured, the electronic message being a request from a researcher for authorization to access patient-identifying information associated with the patient data for at least one of the plurality of qualifying patients, wherein, upon receiving authorization in response to the request, the researcher can access the patient-identifying information associated with the patient data for the at least one of the plurality of qualifying patients identified with the output data, the patient-identifying information being accessed from the EHR system with which that data was captured via the network connection, and wherein the at least one of the plurality of qualifying patients can be recruited to participate in the medical research using the patient-identifying information associated with the patient data for that patient.