title: eTACTS: a method for dynamically filtering clinical trial search results.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Information overload is a significant problem facing online clinical trial searchers. We present eTACTS, a novel interactive retrieval framework using common eligibility tags to dynamically filter clinical trial search results.
  
  
  METHODS
  eTACTS mines frequent eligibility tags from free-text clinical trial eligibility criteria and uses these tags for trial indexing. After an initial search, eTACTS presents to the user a tag cloud representing the current results. When the user selects a tag, eTACTS retains only those trials containing that tag in their eligibility criteria and generates a new cloud based on tag frequency and co-occurrences in the remaining trials. The user can then select a new tag or unselect a previous tag. The process iterates until a manageable number of trials is returned. We evaluated eTACTS in terms of filtering efficiency, diversity of the search results, and user eligibility to the filtered trials using both qualitative and quantitative methods.
  
  
  RESULTS
  eTACTS (1) rapidly reduced search results from over a thousand trials to ten; (2) highlighted trials that are generally not top-ranked by conventional search engines; and (3) retrieved a greater number of suitable trials than existing search engines.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  eTACTS enables intuitive clinical trial searches by indexing eligibility criteria with effective tags. User evaluation was limited to one case study and a small group of evaluators due to the long duration of the experiment. Although a larger-scale evaluation could be conducted, this feasibility study demonstrated significant advantages of eTACTS over existing clinical trial search engines.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A dynamic eligibility tag cloud can potentially enhance state-of-the-art clinical trial search engines by allowing intuitive and efficient filtering of the search result space.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Informatics, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, United States.
authors.forename: Riccardo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Miotto
authors.forename: Silis
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Chunhua
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Weng
mesh_terms: D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D006801:Humans; D016896:Treatment Outcome
keywords: Association rules; Clinical trials; Dynamic information filtering; Information storage and retrieval; Interactive information retrieval; Tag cloud
references.citation: J Biomed Inform. 2013 Dec;46(6):1145-51
references.pmid: 24036004
references.citation: BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2009 Feb 10;9:10
references.pmid: 19208256
references.citation: AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2008 Nov 06;:298-302
references.pmid: 18998925
references.citation: J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2011 Jan-Feb;18(1):24-31
references.pmid: 21169619
references.citation: BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2012 Apr 30;12 Suppl 1:S3
references.pmid: 22595088
references.citation: J Med Internet Res. 2005 Jul 01;7(3):e24
references.pmid: 15998615
references.citation: AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2003;:964
references.pmid: 14728468
references.citation: Methods Inf Med. 1993 Aug;32(4):281-91
references.pmid: 8412823
references.citation: J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2010 May-Jun;17(3):229-36
references.pmid: 20442139
references.citation: AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2006;:604-8
references.pmid: 17238412
references.citation: J Biomed Inform. 2013 Feb;46(1):33-9
references.pmid: 22846169
references.citation: AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2010 Nov 13;2010:597-601
references.pmid: 21347048
references.citation: AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2006;:824-8
references.pmid: 17238456
references.citation: Arch Intern Med. 2005 Oct 24;165(19):2272-7
references.pmid: 16246994
references.citation: Summit Transl Bioinform. 2010 Mar 01;2010:26-30
references.pmid: 21347142
references.citation: Methods Inf Med. 2013;52(5):382-94
references.pmid: 23666475
references.citation: J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2009 Mar-Apr;16(2):228-37
references.pmid: 19074301
references.citation: Summit Transl Bioinform. 2010 Mar 01;2010:46-50
references.pmid: 21347148
references.citation: J Clin Oncol. 2004 Dec 1;22(23):4730-6
references.pmid: 15570073
references.citation: J Biomed Inform. 2011 Apr;44(2):239-50
references.pmid: 20851207
references.citation: AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2008 Nov 06;:141-5
references.pmid: 18999067
references.citation: J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2007 May-Jun;14(3):253-63
references.pmid: 17329729
references.citation: J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2011 Dec;18 Suppl 1:i116-24
references.pmid: 21807647
references.citation: Int J Med Inform. 2012 Jan;81(1):36-44
references.pmid: 22030035
references.citation: Contemp Clin Trials. 2008 Jul;29(4):555-64
references.pmid: 18346942
references.citation: J Biomed Inform. 2010 Jun;43(3):451-67
references.pmid: 20034594