On 8 October, Thomas Wood of Fast Data Science presented the Clinical Trial Risk Tool, along with the Harmony project, at the AI and Deep Learning for Enterprise (AI|DL) meetup sponsored by Daemon. You can now watch the recording of the live stream on AI|DL’s YouTube channel below:
The Clinical Trial Risk Tool leverages natural language processing to identify risk factors in clinical trial protocols. The Clinical Trial Risk Tool is online at https://clinicaltrialrisk.org/tool.
Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning for Enterprise is a meetup group in London dedicated to talks from people in the industry using developments in AI for exciting real world applications.
We initially developed the Clinical Trial Risk Tool to identify risk factors in HIV and TB protocols. Version 2 is coming soon, which will also make cost predictions (i.e. predict the cost of running a trial in dollars), and which will also cover further disease areas, such as Enteric and diarrheal diseases, Influenza, Motor neurone disease, Multiple sclerosis, Neglected tropical diseases, Oncology, COVID, Cystic fibrosis, Malaria, and Polio.
The project has been funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and we have published a technical paper in the journal Gates Open Research:
The software is under MIT License, meaning that it is open source, and can be freely used for other purposes, both commercial and non-commercial, with no restrictions attached. The source code is on Github at https://github.com/fastdatascience/clinical_trial_risk.
[Fast Data Science]](https://fastdatascience.com/) is a leading data science consultancy firm providing bespoke machine learning solutions for businesses of all sizes across the globe, with a concentration on the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.
Creating clinical trial budgets from protocols Creating a clinical trial budget is a fiddly and time consuming process. The playbook for running the clinical trial is a document called the protocol. You can find examples of protocols here. The protocol states how many participants will take part in the trial and also what visits and procedures will take place. Above: a protocol. Source: NCT04128579 A clinical trial manager must read the protocol and look for all pieces of information in the protocol that is relevant to the budget, in particular the Schedule of Events (also called Schedule of Assessments or Schedule of Activities), which is a table or series of tables which indicate which procedures and assessments will take place on which the visits.
We have improved the Clinical Trial Risk Tool in the last 6 months, making it more user friendly and taking on board the feedback that we’ve received. We’ve improved the accuracy of the machine learning components too. The tool now outputs its key figures such as risk levels and estimated cost in easily readable cards, so you can see at a glance the key takeaways from your protocol: The risk factors are now organised into collapsible categories, so you can explore them easily without an information overload.
Guest post by Safeer Khan, Lecturer at Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Government College University, Lahore, Pakistan Introduction The success of a clinical trial is strongly dependent on the structure and coordination of the teams managing it. Given the high stakes and significant impact of every decision made during the trial, it is essential for each team member to collaborate efficiently in order to meet strict deadlines, comply with regulations, and ensure reliable results.
