Evaluating the Effectiveness of Blue-Button Automated Clinical Trial Prescreening on Regional Enrollment: a Randomized Trial

Summary

Enrollment in clinical trials predicts better survival in the most common cancer types including breast cancer, and testing and proving the efficacy of new treatments relies on successfully conducting clinical trials. However, approximately one fifth of cancer clinical trials fail due to insufficient patient enrollment, and only about 6% of adult cancer patients are enrolled onto clinical trials. Barriers remain for patient participation in clinical trials, especially for cancer patients. One specific barrier is trial identification and awareness of trial availability for both patients and providers. This trial tests the hypothesis that by integrating clinical trial eligibility screening into part of routine care in a way that requires little effort and by making that screening site agnostic, the Blue-Button matching functionality will increase overall cancer clinical trial enrollment, and may also result in more diverse clinical trial participants that better reflect the U.S. cancer population. Moreover, regardless of changes in enrollment, the Blue-button screening may allow screening to be done more quickly with fewer human resources when compared to current methods. Identification of potential trial opportunities, however, is only the first barrier to trial enrollment, so this study includes additional examination of barriers subsequent to the identification of relevant trials by cataloging patient-level barriers that prevent enrollment of patients in identified trials.

Description