Pilot study of a point-of-use decision support tool for cancer clinical trials eligibility

Many adults with cancer are not enrolled in clinical trials because caregiv ers do not have the time to match the patient's clinical findings with vary ing eligibility criteria associated with multiple trials for which the pati ent might be eligible. The authors developed a point-of-use portable decisi on support tool (DS-TRIEL) to automate this matching process. The support t ool consists of a hand-held computer with a programmable relational databas e. A two-level hierarchic decision framework was used for the identificatio n of eligible subjects for two open breast cancer clinical trials. The hand -held computer also provides protocol consent forms and schemas to further help the busy oncologist. This decision support tool and the decision frame work on which it is based could be used for multiple trials and different c ancer sites.