The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network shares how patients find clinical trials
The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) published an informative whitepaper detailing different approaches to matching patients with clinical trials and providing examples. In it, they state that 66% of cancer patients find clinical trials through their physician or a staff member working on the study, while just 6% found a trial through self-service matching tools, and 6% found it through matching services provided by advocacy organizations.
Because physicians are often busy and do not have the time to help patients find and take part in research, there is a clear opportunity to increase the number of patients using self-service matching tools to find a clinical trial. As part of ACS CAN’s findings, they detail four attributes that any clinical trial matching tool should have and provide examples of the companies focusing on these features.
Participating in a research study: Tips from ACS CAN
According to the ACS CAN whitepaper, clinical trial matching services vary greatly — some simply aim to educate patients and foster interest, while others provide specific matching and enrollment assistance. However, they all have the following elements in common:
Patient data collection.
To provide information about what trial is right for what patient, all clinical matching services must collect enough patient data to recommend the right studies. The extent to which they do this varies — for example, clinicaltrials.gov, only requires a patient’s condition, while a site like BreastCancerTrials.org requires that patients input many clinical data points to match to a trial. While adding more data can be cumbersome for patients, the trials identified through these services will likely be better matches.
Clinical trial data.
These tools also need to provide enough data about the clinical trial itself, but the details of this data vary from tool to tool. For example, clinicaltrials.gov includes the bare minimum required by law, and trial information is written in free text, making comparing one study to another difficult. On the other hand, some services pull data from government registries, such as clinicaltrials.gov, and enhance it. For example, the whitepaper highlights that Antidote structures the data from clinicaltrials.gov to make it easier to filter and comprehend, increasing the patient friendliness of the tool.
Matching process.
Clinical trial matching entails comparing patient data with trial data to find the best matches. This matching can occur through a technological algorithm (as in the case of Antidote), but there are other options that tools can employ. Smart Patients ranks trials based on patient experiences with the trial, and some advocacy groups provide services that allow patients to talk to nurses to sort out what trials might be best.
User experience.
Every service has a different take on what makes a positive user experience, which comes down to how they engage patients and to what extent the service is helpful in moving toward enrollment. ACS CAN’s research shows that user-friendliness is key, and cites Antidote as an example of a service that translates medical terminology into patient-friendly language. Other services focus on the user interface or on providing educational materials and even human interaction to enhance the user experience.
The paper concludes that while all clinical trial matching services look to provide patients with information about clinical trials, they vary in their primary goals — some seek simply to educate on clinical trial opportunities, while others seek to provide the best trial match for patients based on patient data and eligibility criteria.
Here at Antidote, we agree that approaches across the entire spectrum can work to raise awareness of clinical trials and often to boost enrollment. If you are a patient interested in a clinical trial, we encourage you to start searching today.
