New consortium supports clinical research in struggling Puerto Rico

 A newly established consortium aims to enhance and promote clinical research and drug development in Puerto Rico. It is hoped that the consortium will combat declin­ing clinical trials in the region to benefit patients, the Puerto Rican economy and global science. Established in April, the Puerto Rico Consortium for Clinical Investigation (PRCCI) is a nonprofit government trust of academic and private research sites. The goal of PRCCI is to support best practices, improve and standardize quality, share knowledge and promote the success of clinical trials on the island.

Can machine learning technology aid in patient recruitment?

Researchers at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital have come up with a novel ap­proach to the ever-challenging problem of patient recruitment for clinical trials: a math­ematical algorithm that enables computers to predict whether a patient will accept an invitation to enroll in a trial. A type of machine learning technology, the algorithm essentially teaches computers to make predictions about patient behavior by analyzing and interpreting patient demographic and socio­economic data, while factoring in characteristics of the trial itself, such as length. The technique has been widely used for a variety of clinical tasks, such as identifying signs and symptoms of specific diseases.

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