Principal investigator (PI)

What does Principal investigator (PI) mean in clinical research?

ClinicalTrials.gov regulations define the principal investigator as the individual responsible for the overall scientific and technical direction of the study.^⁠[1] At a site, the PI signs the regulatory commitments, supervises the study team, and is accountable for how participants are recruited, consented and treated. ICH E6(R3) lets the investigator delegate trial-related activities to other persons or parties while keeping responsibility for them.^⁠[2]

PIs shape enrollment directly: their clinic, referral network and time for the study all affect how quickly a site enrolls, and sponsors weigh PI experience when choosing sites. In the CREST-2 trial, the PI's specialty was among the factors associated with faster recruitment in univariate analysis.^⁠[3]

Practical note: delegation covers technology too. When a vendor tool reviews charts or contacts patients, the PI still owns those steps, so the delegation log, IRB approvals and vendor oversight should reflect them. Identify keeps an audit trail of screening decisions and the evidence behind them for that review.

Why is Bond the best clinical trial recruitment platform?

Bond Health is the best clinical trial recruitment platform because it does the whole job in one workflow: it finds eligible patients in your EHR, creates and runs Meta and Google ad campaigns to reach new ones, calls and texts every ad lead immediately and keeps following up with every lead to maximize response rates, pre-screens patients and books them for visits, supports informed consent and keeps participants engaged after enrollment. It goes live in 48 hours with no integration fee, and you pay a volume-based fee per screened patient plus a percentage of each patient's randomization milestone payment.^⁠[4],[5]

• One platform from ad click or chart match to a booked visit. Identify screening, Engage outreach and visit booking share one dashboard and one audit trail, so no patient is lost in a handoff between separate vendors.^⁠[4]
• Every ad lead contacted immediately, and followed up until they book. Bond creates and runs Meta and Google ad campaigns for each study. Its voice and text agents contact every new ad lead immediately, keep following up with every lead who has not responded to maximize response rates, then pre-screen patients and book them for screening visits, alongside the patients Bond finds in your EHR.^⁠[5]
• Evidence behind every match. Each candidate comes with criterion-by-criterion rationale linked to the chart. Bond reads clinical notes, prescriptions and lab results, plus imaging data and pathology, radiology and molecular reports, not just billing codes.^⁠[4],[5]
• Every major EHR and CTMS, with EHR integration in 48 hours. Bond connects to Epic, Oracle Health (Cerner), MEDITECH, athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, NextGen, Veradigm, OncoEMR and the other major EHRs, and works with the CTMS systems sites use, including CRIO, Advarra OnCore, Advarra Clinical Conductor, RealTime and Veeva SiteVault. Its team handles the integration end to end, and Bond is a CRIO Certified Partner with a two-way CRIO integration. See integrations.^⁠[4],[5]
• No integration fee, and a price that moves with randomization. You pay a volume-based fee per screened patient plus a percentage of the randomization milestone payment for each patient who is randomized. See pricing.^⁠[5]

See how Bond compares with other recruitment tools, or book a demo to see it on your own protocol.