FACTS (Find the Appropriate Clinical Trials) for You: A Computer-Based Decision Support System for Breast Cancer Patients

Abstract

We have developed a system for clinical trial eligibility determination where patients or primary care providers can enter clinical information about a patient and obtain a ranked list of clinical trials for which the patient is likely to be eligible. We used clinical trial eligibility information from the National Cancer Institute's Physician Data Query (PDQ) database. We translated each free-text eligibility criterion into a machine executable statement using a derivation of the Arden Syntax. Clinical trial protocols were then structured as collections of these eligibility criteria using XML. The application compares the entered patient information against each of the eligibility criteria and returns a numerical score. Results are displayed in order of likelihood of match. We have tested our system using all phase II and III clinical trials for treatment of metastatic breast cancer found in the PDQ database. Preliminary results are encouraging. We have completed the tasks in the approved statement of work that were planned for Year I of this project. A working prototype of the system we envision as our final product is available at http://telmato.bwh.harvard.edu: 8OOO/FACTS/FormIn.htm.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 1999
Accession Number
ADA381179

Entities

People

  • Lucila Ohno-machado

Organizations

  • Brigham and Women's Hospital

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Biological Therapy
  • Breast Cancer
  • Computers
  • Health Services
  • Information Systems
  • Medical Personnel
  • Myocardial Ischemia
  • Operating Systems

Readers

  • Computational Linguistics
  • Database Systems and Applications
  • Oncology