Premium
Free‐text information retrieval system for a rapid enrollment of patients into clinical trials
Author(s) -
Averbuch M.,
Maimon O.,
Rokach L.,
Ezer E.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
clinical pharmacology and therapeutics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.941
H-Index - 188
eISSN - 1532-6535
pISSN - 0009-9236
DOI - 10.1016/j.clpt.2004.11.054
Subject(s) - computer science , information retrieval , clinical trial , sql , inclusion (mineral) , text messaging , interface (matter) , table (database) , information extraction , medicine , database , world wide web , psychology , social psychology , bubble , maximum bubble pressure method , parallel computing
Background This paper presents a novel free‐text information retrieval system designed especifically for medical case finding applications. Methods The proposed system begins by extracting medical information from free‐text narrative reports and storing it in a predefined relational clinical data mart. The extraction is performed using a sophisticated medical thesaurus with a fast regular expression based method for pattern match. Following the extraction phase, inclusion/exclusion criteria are provided to the system using a physician‐friendly user interface. The system converts the entered criteria into a single SQL command, which can be then executed on the relational data mart. Results Using inclusion and exclusion criteria of a published diabetes clinical trial ( Diabetes Care 25:30–34, 2002) on a 500‐discharge summaries database of a large hospital in NY, the performance of the system has been compared with the results obtained through a manual search by two physicians. (see Table) Conclusions The initial comparison validates that the proposed system can be successfully used for an ultra rapid case‐finding applications, such as identifying appropriate patients to be enrolled in clinical trials with a high sensitivity, while paying only a small price for reduced specificity. Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics (2005) 77 , P13–P13; doi: 10.1016/j.clpt.2004.11.054Sensitivity Specificity Time NeededMDs search 71% 100% 50 hours System search 98% 91% 15 seconds