Computational challenges and human factors influencing the design and use of clinical research participant eligibility pre-screening tools

Biomedcentral.com: May 30, 2012

Clinical trials are the primary mechanism for advancing clinical care and evidenced-based practice, yet challenges with the recruitment of participants for such trials are widely recognized as a major barrier to these types of studies. Data warehouses store large amounts of heterogenous clinical data that can be used to enhance recruitment practices, but multiple challenges exist when using a data warehouse for such activities, due to the manner of collection, management, integration, analysis, and dissemination of the data. A critical early step in leveraging the DW for recruitment purposes is being able to match trial eligibility criteria to discrete and semi-structured data types in the data warehouse, though trial eligibility criteria tend to be written without concern for their computability. We present the multimodal evaluation of a web-based tool that can be used for prescreening patients for clinical trial eligibility. Read more