Computerized Clinical Trials Locater Opens in San Francisco

A new service at Davies Hospital in San Francisco will
search a database of local clinical trials and prepare a printout
with description and contact information for all trials for which
a patient may qualify. Anyone with AIDS or HIV may use this
service. At present, only trials in the San Francisco Bay Area
are listed; however, the system could be customized by medical or
research institutions elsewhere.

This service, called Trials Search, differs from other
clinical-trial information systems now in use. For example, the
government-sponsored AIDS Clinical Trials Information Service
provides a free telephone number (800/TRIALS-A) which anyone can
call to ask questions about clinical trials in their area.
However, the 800/TRIALS-A system is not set up to accept a
patient's medical profile and automatically match the trials
against it. Another computerized trials system, running at San
Francisco General Hospital, keeps a database of potential
volunteers and searches that database when one of its trials
needs subjects. But in this system, volunteers sign up and do
not know when (or if) they will be contacted; the Trials Search
system, by contrast, operates at the potential volunteer's
initiative, and provides a list of possible trials immediately.
We do not know of any other service which does this.

To use Trials Search, the patient fills out a one-page form,
indicating past and present opportunistic infections (from a list
of 20), past and present treatments (from a list of 18) and
present laboratory-test values (nine are requested: T-helper
count, white blood count, hematocrit, etc.; patients can obtain
the values from their physician's office). This simplified
medical history includes the most important information used in
the inclusion and exclusion criteria for most clinical trials.
Trials Search cannot, of course, tell for sure whether a patient
will qualify for entry into a particular study; only the
researchers running each trial can make that decision. But
Trials Search can rule out the great majority of trials for which
the person could not possibly qualify. (In the San Francisco
area, about 80 clinical trials are currently running; Trials
Search typically locates about ten to 15 of these, on the
average, for each client.)

The patient's medical form, which can be anonymous, is
mailed or taken in person to Trials Search. It takes only about
a minute for a trained operator to enter the patient's
information, and the computer then prints a list of likely
trials. There is a small fee for this service: no more than $7.
per search, with reduced rates for persons with low income. This
fee pays approximately a third of the cost of running Trials
Search, which has also received small grants from the Bay Area
Physicians for Human Rights, from AT&T, and from an anonymous
individual. The project's organizers hope to acquire more
substantial funding, after usage of the system proves that it is
meeting a need.

If medical centers in other areas want to install this
system, it would be technically easy because the only equipment
needed is a Macintosh computer with a laser printer. There is no
telephone or network connection to any other system. Little
computer expertise would be required. However, no decision has
yet been made about whether to distribute the software; and
documentation would need to be written to instruct personnel at
other medical centers on how to install and operate the system.

Trials Search is now open for persons with AIDS or HIV (in
San Francisco or elsewhere) who want to find out about San
Francisco area trials for which they may qualify. For more
information, call Jay Seward, at the Institute for HIV Research
and Treatment of Davies Medical Center, 415/565-6368, 10 a.m. to
4:30 p.m. weekdays except Wednesdays.