Feasibility of institution-agnostic, EHR-integrated regional clinical trial matching.

Clinical trials provide cancer patients the opportunity to participate in research and development of new drugs and treatment approaches. It can be difficult to find available clinical trials for which a patient is eligible. This article describes an approach to clinical trial matching using limited patient data to search for trials regionally, beyond just the patient's local care site. Feasibility testing shows that this process can lead to a net 91% increase in the number of potential clinical trial matches available within 20 miles of a patient. Based on these findings, a software tool based on this model is being developed that will automatically send limited, deidentified information from patient medical records to services that can identify possible clinical trials within a given region.