Supporting FAIR* data discoverability in clinical research: building an object metadata repository of clinical trial objects

BACKGROUND Digital Therapeutics (DTx) provide evidence based therapeutic health interventions that have been clinically validated to deliver therapeutic outcomes, such that the software is the treatment. Digital methodologies are increasingly adopted to conduct clinical trials due to advantages they provide including increases in efficiency and decreases in trial costs. Digital therapeutics are digital by design and can leverage the potential of digital and remote clinical trial methods. OBJECTIVE The principal purpose of this scoping review is to review the literature to determine whether digital technologies are being used in DTx clinical research, which type are being used and whether publications are noting any advantages to their use. As DTx development is an emerging field there are likely gaps in the knowledge base regarding DTx and clinical trials, and the purpose of this review is to illuminate those gaps. A secondary purpose is to consider questions which emerged during the review process including whether fully remote digital clinical research is appropriate for all health conditions and whether digital clinical trial methods are inline with the principles of Good Clinical Practice. METHODS 1,326 records were identified by searching research databases and 1,227 reviewed at the full-article level in order to determine if they were appropriate for inclusion. Confirmation of clinical trial status, use of digital clinical research methods and digital therapeutic status as well as inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied in order to determine relevant articles. Digital methods employed in DTx research were extracted from each article and these data were synthesized in order to determine which digital methods are currently used in clinical trial research. RESULTS After applying our criteria for scoping review inclusion, 11 articles were identified. All articles used at least one form of digital clinical research methodology enabling an element of remote research. The most commonly used digital methods are those related to recruitment, enrollment and the assessment of outcomes. A small number of articles reported using other methods such as online compensation (n = 3), or digital reminders for participants (n = 5). The majority of digital therapeutics clinical research using digital methods is conducted in the United States and increasing number of articles using digital methods are published each year. CONCLUSIONS Digital methods are used in clinical trial research evaluating DTx, though not frequently as evidenced by the low proportion of articles included in this review. Fully remote clinical trial research is not yet the standard, more frequently authors are using partially remote methods. Additionally, there is tremendous variability in the level of detail describing digital methods within the literature. As digital technologies continue to advance and the clinical research DTx literature matures, digital methods which facilitate remote research may be used more frequently.

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Shared-Task Worklists Improve Clinical Trial Recruitment Workflow in an Academic Emergency Department

Applied Clinical Informatics ◽

10.1055/s-0041-1727153 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (02) ◽

pp. 293-300

Author(s):

Kevin S. Naceanceno ◽

Stacey L. House ◽

Phillip V. Asaro

Keyword(s):

Clinical Trial ◽

Emergency Department ◽

Clinical Trials ◽

Clinical Research ◽

Substantial Reduction ◽

Text Message ◽

High Volume ◽

Text Messages ◽

Shared Task ◽

Clinical Research Coordinators

Abstract Background Clinical trials performed in our emergency department at Barnes-Jewish Hospital utilize a centralized infrastructure for alerting, screening, and enrollment with rule-based alerts sent to clinical research coordinators. Previously, all alerts were delivered as text messages via dedicated cellular phones. As the number of ongoing clinical trials increased, the volume of alerts grew to an unmanageable level. Therefore, we have changed our primary notification delivery method to study-specific, shared-task worklists integrated with our pre-existing web-based screening documentation system. Objective To evaluate the effects on screening and recruitment workflow of replacing text-message delivery of clinical trial alerts with study-specific shared-task worklists in a high-volume academic emergency department supporting multiple concurrent clinical trials. Methods We analyzed retrospective data on alerting, screening, and enrollment for 10 active clinical trials pre- and postimplementation of shared-task worklists. Results Notifications signaling the presence of potentially eligible subjects for clinical trials were more likely to result in a screen (p < 0.001) with the implementation of shared-task worklists compared with notifications delivered as text messages for 8/10 clinical trials. The change in workflow did not alter the likelihood of a notification resulting in an enrollment (p = 0.473). The Director of Research reported a substantial reduction in the amount of time spent redirecting clinical research coordinator screening activities. Conclusion Shared-task worklists, with the functionalities we have described, offer a viable alternative to delivery of clinical trial alerts via text message directly to clinical research coordinators recruiting for multiple concurrent clinical trials in a high-volume academic emergency department.

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39901 Breaking down silos to synergize clinical trial development and initiation: The Clinical Research Support Center, University of Minnesota

Journal of Clinical and Translational Science ◽

10.1017/cts.2021.677 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-2

Author(s):

Brian L. Odlaug ◽

Francoise Crevel ◽

Nicole Tosun ◽

Ryan Lee ◽

Carrie McKenzie ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Clinical Trial ◽

Clinical Research ◽

University Of Minnesota ◽

Research Support

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Efficacy and safety of Suxiao Jiuxin Pill in the treatment of stable angina (Qi stagnation and blood stasis syndrome): study protocol of a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multi-center clinical trial

Trials ◽

10.1186/s13063-021-05448-6 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 22 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Xiaofen Ruan ◽

Yiping Li ◽

Yuanlong Sun ◽

Meijun Jia ◽

Xiaowen Xu ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Clinical Trial ◽

Clinical Research ◽

Stable Angina ◽

Conventional Therapy ◽

Blood Stasis ◽

Chronic Stable Angina ◽

Blood Stasis Syndrome ◽

Double Blind ◽

Double Blind Placebo ◽

Qi Stagnation

Abstract Background Coronary heart disease (CHD) has become one of the biggest health problems in the world. Stable angina is a common clinical type of CHD with poor prognosis and high mortality. Although there are various interventions for stable angina, none of them can significantly reduce mortality. Both basic and clinical research have shown that Suxiao Jiuxin Pill (SJP) can relieve the symptoms of angina pectoris and improve the clinical efficacy, but there is a lack of high-quality clinical research to provide research-based evidence. We design a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy of SJP for stable angina. Methods/design This is a prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, and multicenter trial. The trial will enroll 324 participants with chronic stable angina (Qi Stagnation and Blood Stasis syndrome). All participants will have received the conventional therapy of chronic stable angina. Participants will be randomized into two groups, conventional therapy plus SJP group and conventional therapy plus placebo group. Eligible participants will receive either SJP or placebo (five pills administered orally, three times daily) in addition to conventional treatment for 24 weeks. The primary outcomes are the symptom improvement rate of angina from baseline to 4 weeks after inclusion and major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE). The secondary outcomes are angina classification (CCS), improvement of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) syndromes, Seattle Angina Scale score, the dosage of emergency drugs and the stopping rate, and electrocardiogram (EKG) efficacy. Adverse events will be monitored throughout the trial. Discussion Integrated traditional Chinese and Western Medicine is commonly used for angina in China. This study will evaluate the clinical effectiveness and safety of SJP for angina. The results of the trial will provide high-level clinical research-based evidence for the application of SJP instable angina. Trial registration This study protocol was registered on 14 March 2019. The registration number is ChiCTR1900021876 on the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry.

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Adaptive Semantic Tag Mining from Heterogeneous Clinical Research Texts

Methods of Information in Medicine ◽

10.3414/me13-01-0130 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 54 (02) ◽

pp. 164-170 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

T. Hao ◽

C. Weng

Keyword(s):

Clinical Trial ◽

Clinical Research ◽

Architectural Design ◽

Semantic Equivalence ◽

Clinical Text ◽

Mining Algorithm ◽

Prevalence Trends ◽

Trial Protocols ◽

Mining Methods ◽

Frequency Threshold

SummaryObjectives: To develop an adaptive approach to mine frequent semantic tags (FSTs) from heterogeneous clinical research texts.Methods: We develop a “plug-n-play” framework that integrates replaceable un-supervised kernel algorithms with formatting, functional, and utility wrappers for FST mining. Temporal information identification and semantic equivalence detection were two example functional wrappers. We first compared this approach’s recall and efficiency for mining FSTs from ClinicalTrials.gov to that of a recently published tag-mining algorithm. Then we assessed this approach’s adaptability to two other types of clinical research texts: clinical data requests and clinical trial protocols, by comparing the prevalence trends of FSTs across three texts.Results: Our approach increased the average recall and speed by 12.8% and 47.02% respectively upon the baseline when mining FSTs from ClinicalTrials.gov, and maintained an overlap in relevant FSTs with the baseline ranging between 76.9% and 100% for varying FST frequency thresholds. The FSTs saturated when the data size reached 200 documents. Consistent trends in the prevalence of FST were observed across the three texts as the data size or frequency threshold changed.Conclusions: This paper contributes an adaptive tag-mining framework that is scalable and adaptable without sacrificing its recall. This component-based architectural design can be potentially generalizable to improve the adaptability of other clinical text mining methods.

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