Generating solutions

Clinical trials are a crucial element of the modern health system. Cancer patients in Canada, however, face substantial barriers to accessing state-of-the-art precision therapies. This is because matching patients to trials is an increasingly resource-intensive and time-consuming task. The disjointed nature of the digital infrastructure means that already overworked clinicians have to spend time parsing through complex eligibility criteria and clinical diagnostic data. The result is fewer patients are enrolled in trials for which they are eligible. The project will develop PMATCH, an innovative open-source software platform. PMATCH uses powerful machine learning techniques to search through complex clinical and genomic eligibility criteria along with the data generated by each patient during their cancer journey, e.g., blood tests, surgery, family history. Clinicians will be able to match their patients with the best clinical trials for each individual in near-real-time. PMATCH will also standardize the clinical and sequencing data and ensure their FAIRness (findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability). Expected benefits of the PMATCH pilot include a 50 per cent increase in patients matched to precision medicine trials across Ontario, acceleration of the identification of actionable biomarkers, increased pharmaceutical support for academic clinical trials, and improved patient experience in trials.