TrialMatch: Applying AI to Find Trials for Patients

SWOG is partnering with Mednet, a peer-to-peer educational community for physicians, to conduct a study testing a new artificial intelligence-enabled tool designed to make it easier for doctors to identify relevant clinical trials for their patients.

Mednet – the largest online community for oncologists in the U.S. – has developed the tool, TrialMatch, with support from a $2 million NCI small business innovation research contract. Rollout is this week.

TrialMatch lets physicians enter queries directly via the Mednet interface to find available studies for a patient. The tool parses a doctor’s plain language description of a clinical case and returns a list of actively enrolling trials in the area.

Importantly, TrialMatch also includes a passive query function that’s integrated with Mednet’s knowledge base of more than 22,000 expert-answered clinical questions. Physicians who turn to Mednet to find answers related to a specific patient’s case will now see, along with curated responses from domain experts, brief descriptions of trials relevant to the clinical situation being discussed.

If you’re a SWOG investigator who’s active on Mednet, you may be invited to complete brief pre-use and post-use surveys as part of the six-month study of the TrialMatch tool. 

Your responses to those surveys, combined with data on Mednet usage and on enrollment to NCI-supported trials, will help us learn whether the tool can

1. raise oncologists’ awareness of relevant clinical trials
   and
2. increase oncologist referrals to clinical trials.

SWOG collaboration with Mednet to promote clinical trial awareness goes back almost a decade, with SWOG members Dr. Nadine Housri and Dr. Elizabeth Henry leading multiple initiatives. 

A 2018 Hope Foundation SWOG Early Exploration and Development (SEED) Fund award to Dr. Housri (Mednet’s co-founder and chief medical officer) supported a pilot study to identify effective methods for raising physician awareness of clinical trials, working with two SWOG trials in particular – S1418 in breast cancer, and S1501 in symptom management. Survey results and lessons learned from that pilot study have been applied in constructing the TrialMatch tool and the current study of it.

Since that time, Dr. Housri and Mednet have also worked with numerous SWOG investigators across several research committees to raise awareness of – and to conduct question-and-answer sessions on – more than a dozen other trials.

Of particular note, the lung committee’s community engagement subcommittee has collaborated extensively with Mednet. Roughly two-thirds of the oncologists on the platform practice at community-based sites, and the subcommittee has found those members to be a rich source of insight into community-level challenges and opportunities. 

You can learn more about TrialMatch (and Mednet) at themednet.org/trial-match. You’ll also have chances to learn more about the tool, and the study of it, at SWOG’s October group meeting in Chicago.
 

Call for Member Applications: SWOG PrIME Council
SWOG’s Professional Integrity and Member Engagement (PrIME) Council, working under Vice Chair for Membership and Accrual Dr. Don Dizon, seeks to strengthen organizational culture, promote professionalism, and enhance meaningful engagement across the entire SWOG membership. 

The PrIME Council is seeking members from across the many roles, disciplines, and institutions that make up SWOG (must be an active SWOG member). Council members serve a two-year term. 

Visit the call for applications to learn more and apply to be a Council member.