THE RECRUITMENT SIGNAL
DPHARM 2026 EDITION — SROTAS HEALTH
Srotas is here to share Eva’s story, one that will probably feel familiar to many people working in clinical research.
A couple of weeks ago we spoke with Eva, a study coordinator on an oncology protocol. We asked her what a normal recruitment day looked like. She told us about Tuesday.
Eva’s Desk
That morning, she had a list of 40 potentially eligible patients. Getting to that list had already taken nearly one week of chart review, one patient at a time.
Then came two monitoring visits, an SAE report, and a sponsor call.
By 5:30pm, Eva had reached just six of the 40 patients. Three went to voicemail.
The trial reported slow enrollment that month. Eva had not failed. Her workflow had simply run out of Tuesday.
Why Eva’s Story Matters Now
Eva’s Tuesday was personal, but it was not isolated. Coordinator hours stay fixed while trial activity keeps climbing.
That week, as part of her routine, Eva found some interesting market dynamics. Global Phase I to III initiations were up 1.3% in Q1 2026 alone, with trial starts up 12% in the US and 9.8% in Europe. Metabolic and immunology studies were growing fastest, up 47% and 43% year over year.
Source: Clinical Trials Day 2026, Q1 study trends
Three reads shaped her thinking that week: trial volume rising across the US and Europe, patient focus moving deeper into trial operations, and international guidance now treating recruitment and retention as a practical fix for research waste.
As part of that research, Eva looked into patient recruitment challenges and found there are more than 100 vendors, most solving only one piece of the problem, in bits and pieces, with no single platform covering the whole thing.
What We Learned From Eva
All that market movement helped her identify a solution that could simplify her day-to-day. As part of that research, she found Srotas Health, and it looked like it could close her gap.
She did not need another patient list. She needed the work after the list to move, without adding tasks to her day. This is the gap Srotas closes.
For Eva, that means the list is built in seconds, every patient can be contacted in their own language, and the pipeline stays visible. She still owns every clinical decision. Her available hours no longer determine how many patients can be reached.
The Same Tuesday, Replayed With Srotas
Out of Srotas’s 80,000-patient oncology database, the AI flagged 110 potentially eligible patients in 0.2 seconds, down from the roughly 30 minutes it would take a coordinator to review each patient by hand.
Eva spent about an hour reviewing those 110 profiles herself and confirmed 75 as strong candidates to move forward. Those 75 patients were engaged that same day, across SMS, email, and calls, handled by Srotas’s AI voice and messaging agents.
By the end of the day, three days of the recruitment team’s calendar were already booked, filled with follow-up conversations Srotas’s AI agents had scheduled on their behalf.
Proof, Not Promises
The Srotas Health platform was evaluated against two-oncologist consensus across 10 breast cancer trials and 150 patient-trial assessments.
Source: Srotas Health validation study
In the field, a QCR Network study generated 17,875 interactions and onboarded 30 patients for an obesity trial in under four weeks, no extra headcount required. Across sites using Srotas, patient recruitment increased by 60%.
A Note From Suman
Eva’s story is the conversation I am taking to DPHARM in Boston. I want to hear where your own recruitment workflow slows down, whether it’s finding patients, reaching them, or holding momentum after first contact.
If you will be there, take 20 minutes with me in Boston. If you are not, book a call instead. No deck, just your bottleneck and an honest answer on whether we can help.
Co-founder and CEO, Srotas Health