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An Agent-Based Approach to Real-Time Patient Identification for Clinical Trials

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Abstract

Patient recruitment for clinical trials is expensive and has been a significant challenge, with many trials not achieving their recruitment goals. One method that shows promise for improving recruitment is the use of interactive prompts that inform practitioners of patient eligibility for clinical trials during consultation. This paper presents the ePCRN-IDEA recruitment system, which utilises an agent-based infrastructure to enable real-time recruitment of patients. In essence, whenever patients enter a clinic, the system compares their details against eligibility criteria, which define the requirements of active clinical trials. If a patient is found to be eligible, a prompt is raised to notify the user. In this way, it becomes possible for recruitment to take place quickly in a cost effective manner, whilst maintaining patient trust through the involvement of their own health care practitioner.

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© 2012 ICST Institute for Computer Science, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering

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Tyson, G., Taweel, A., Miles, S., Luck, M., Van Staa, T., Delaney, B. (2012). An Agent-Based Approach to Real-Time Patient Identification for Clinical Trials. In: Kostkova, P., Szomszor, M., Fowler, D. (eds) Electronic Healthcare. eHealth 2011. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 91. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29262-0_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29262-0_20

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-29261-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-29262-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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