Using the Internet to search for cancer clinical trials: A comparative audit of clinical trial search tools

Abstract

Advancing the clinical trial research process to improve cancer treatment necessitates helping people with cancer identify and enroll in studies, and researchers are using the power of the Internet to facilitate this process. This study used a content analysis of online cancer clinical trials search tools to understand what people with cancer might encounter. The content analysis revealed that clinical trial search tools were easy to identify using a popular search engine, but their functionality and content varied greatly. Most required that users be fairly knowledgeable about their medical condition and sophisticated in their web navigation skills. The ability to search by a specific health condition or type of cancer was the most common search strategy. The more complex tools required that users input detailed information about their personal medical history and have knowledge of specific clinical trial terminology. Search tools, however, only occasionally advised users to consult their doctors regarding clinical trials decision-making. This, along with the complexity of the tools suggests that online search tools may not adequately facilitate the clinical trials recruitment process. Findings from this analysis can be used as a framework from which to systematically examine actual consumer experience with online clinical trials search tools.

Improving Access to Online Health Information With Conversational Agents: A Randomized Controlled Experiment

“…To evaluate our system, we conducted a between-subjects randomized trial comparing our conversational agent search engine (“agent”) to the conventional facet- and keyword-based search engine (“control”) developed by the NCI ([7]) with both search engine interfaces indexing the same set of clinical trials. Participants were recruited from a pool of adult English-speaking cancer patients from across the literacy spectrum.…”

“…One example is the clinical trial search engine, which retrieves descriptions of clinical trials from a repository or database [7]. Several of these search engines are available on the Web, developed by both commercial firms and the US government (eg, the National Cancer Institute [8]).…”

Outcomes of a Cancer Clinical Trial Matching Service

“…For example, clinicaltrials.gov permits screening by state but not by zip code, does not include fields for cancer substage or prior treatment, and does not provide users the opportunity to forward their search parameters and results to a call center where knowledgeable staff can assist with medical and logistical questions. Integration of clinical trial databases with personal health records or electronic medical records is a promising approach, but this is not available to a large number of patients [22][23][24]. Several studies have evaluated community-based and healthcare facility-based interventions to promote clinical trial enrollment [6].…”

YouTube Videos as a Source of Information About Clinical Trials: Observational Study (Preprint)

“…Much of the clinical trial information available online however, has been characterized as variable in quality with poor readability [23]. While clinical trial search tools are fairly easy to locate on the Internet using various search engines, content and functionality were also highly variable and users needed a fair amount of knowledge about their condition and good web navigation skills in order to access relevant information [24]. In a study that simulated the search for treatments of four common cancers by a naïve cancer patient without clinical trial knowledge, only 85% of cancer-treatment sites mentioned clinical trials on the landing page and only 68% provided links to trials [23].…”