title: [Internet use in clinical trials].
abstract: Recruiting patients is a critical point of today's clinical research and, along the years, several solutions have been proposed, even if their efficacy seems to be doubtful. On the other hand, nowadays, Internet represents a great opportunity for improving clinical trial recruitments. Nevertheless, on-line recruitment services (e-recruitment) could ensure some advantages (such as facilitating interaction between supply and demand of clinical research, time and money savings/optimizations, data entry errors reduction), but also raise some issues (such as those related to sampling, information, consent, real identity of participants and risks for data breaches). The article debates on the difficulties to recruit patients for clinical research, in general, and e-recruitment particularly, discussing some ethical issues raised by internet enrolment.
authors.affiliation: Istituto di Bioetica, Facoltà di Medicina e chirurgia "A. Gemelli", Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Roma, Italia.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Refolo
authors.affiliation: Istituto di Bioetica, Facoltà di Medicina e chirurgia "A. Gemelli", Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Roma, Italia.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sacchini
authors.affiliation: Istituto di Bioetica, Facoltà di Medicina e chirurgia "A. Gemelli", Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Roma, Italia.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Minacori
authors.affiliation: Istituto di Bioetica, Facoltà di Medicina e chirurgia "A. Gemelli", Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Roma, Italia.
authors.forename: A G
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Spagnolo
mesh_terms: D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D018579:Patient Selection