Conflict Discovery and Analysis for Clinical Trials

Abstract

Today, cancer patients and their caregivers often prefer to share the decision making process with their physicians and may be highly involved in the process of locating and choosing clinical trials for treatment. One issue is that treatments received on one trial may preclude participation in other trials because of eligibility requirements in the study design. We are developing a system to help patients and caregivers locate clinical trials, focusing on pediatric cancer where clinical trial participation is very high. We present a method by which conflicts - that is, the possibility that one or more interventions in one trial may cause a patient to not be eligible for another trial - can be determined in a group of clinical trials for Wilm's Tumor. More specifically, a conflict occurs when a drug or treatment mentioned in an intervention of one trial is also present in an eligibility criterion in another trial. We present results based on generating the conflicts in this group of trials, including the types of trials are most likely to cause conflicts. We also look at the specific treatments and drugs that cause conflicts, using the UMLS Metathesaurus concepts. The conflict generating algorithm will be used as part of the clinical trial search system, allowing patients to determine if a given trial will preclude him or her from other trials in the future.