Clinical Research Informatics: Recent Advances and Future Directions

OBJECTIVES

To summarize significant developments in Clinical Research Informatics (CRI) over the past two years and discuss future directions.

METHODS

Survey of advances, open problems and opportunities in this field based on exploration of current literature.

RESULTS

Recent advances are structured according to three use cases of clinical research: Protocol feasibility, patient identification/ recruitment and clinical trial execution.

DISCUSSION

CRI is an evolving, dynamic field of research. Global collaboration, open metadata, content standards with semantics and computable eligibility criteria are key success factors for future developments in CRI.

ClinicalTrials.gov: An Underutilized Source of Research Data About the Design and Conduct of Commercial Clinical Trials

Since 2007, the US federal government has required that organizations sponsoring clinical trials with a least one site in the United States submit information on these clinical trials to an existing database: ClinicalTrials.gov . Over time, the number of mandatory variables has grown and will probably continue to grow. The database now represents an important source of descriptive information about the landscape for clinical trials. In addition, it constitutes a rich pool of data to test hypotheses-for instance, what variables are associated with an organization's ability to correctly estimate study completion times or complete those studies in as short a time frame as possible. This paper concludes that for mandated variables that the authors have labeled study identification, protocol and study design, and study execution, the data set constitutes a potentially very valuable research resource. With the exception of some site-related information, incomplete data did not exceed 3%. The incomplete site data are concentrated in several companies, so it is not unreasonable to assume that those data will also become more complete.