As anyone working within the clinical trial space will know, a crucial phase of the early trial process is pre-screening patients to match to a specific clinical trial and the importance of patient centricity throughout this process. The pre-screening process has long-been conducted through approaches including phone interviews and questionnaires. This initial phase of the pre-trial process aims to gather information on a patient and to determine whether they will be a good fit for further screening and potential eligibility and or willingness to be in a clinical trial. One critique of using these approaches however is that they can fail to accurately capture a patient’s entire medical history and leave out important health information. Now, with the digitization of clinical trials, pre-screening is getting a boost in the arm from an NLP AI software that is designed for a specific therapeutic area and can provide sponsors with a more accurate and comprehensive background on potential candidates for clinical trials.
In the United Kingdom, the NHS recently deployed an oncology-specific NLP AI software to several hospitals that has the ability to scan health records and find a potential match for further screening during the pre-trial phase. More broadly, AI-based matching and screening is emerging as a new way to increase the workflow of analyzing health records and eliminate constraints that are common in this pre-trial phase. One drawback from non-digital screening through questionnaires and phone calls is that important patient medical data can be overlooked, such as previous surgeries, or whether or not a patient could be pregnant. Through a more exhaustive screening process with NLP AI that is developed specifically to gather data for one therapeutic area of interest, clinical trial access is also benefitted as a larger demographic can potentially be reached. Patient centricity is a critical consideration for conducting clinical trials that focus on the needs of the patient as well as the requirements and criteria that must be met for a trial. As recent safety provisions in the EU’s new Clinical Trial Regulation (EU-CTR) represent, upholding patients protections and medical ethics are one of the most important practices to ensure a successful clinical trial and even to promote awareness of clinical trials in general.
As sponsors and those working in the clinical trial know well, patient centered care involves communicating with patients who have diverse backgrounds and speak different languages. To meet this challenge, effective translations for patient-facing documentation such as questionnaires, have been a practical tool to navigate linguistic barriers, find potential candidates for clinical trials, and promote the importance of clinical trials. Now, with the rise of digital medical communications and tailored AI-based solutions to automate the pre-screening process, translations for software and digital content will be more in demand. Professional translations that are carried out by subject matter experts with working knowledge of important therapeutic areas and clinical trials can prove to be a useful asset for finding potential matches and reaching new demographics. To learn more about the patient centric localization solutions, visit www.lifesciences.csoftinlt.com!