2024 SBIR TOPIC 465: CANCER PREVENTION AND TREATMENT CLINICAL TRIALS TOOLS FOR RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION OF DIVERSE POPULATIONS

TheMednet, an interactive QandA and social decision support platform, is currently the largest and most active online community for oncologists in the United States, reaching over 85% of US oncologists. The forum serves as a centralized knowledge resource that can be accessed by physicians anywhere in the US at no cost. For this Phase II project, theMednet proposes to further develop its solution to the critical problem of clinical trial enrollment by improving physician awareness of clinical trials by developing technology that generates clinical trial recommendations based on a physician’s site activity, user profile, location, and past patient history. Our goal is to target messaging and social content about clinical trials to oncologists at the point of care so that they are aware of and encourage eligible patients to enroll. theMednet also aims to increase diversity of patient enrollment with the development predictive tools that enable targeted messaging towards physicians likely to serve those historically underrepresented in clinical trials. To test the approach, theMednet will implement a randomized controlled trial in collaboration with SWOG, a National Cancer Institute clinical trial collaborative group, to evaluate whether theMednet will improve accrual to clinical trials.