Expert validation of an artificial intelligence–enabled trial matching solution using real-world data from patients with cancer.

1501 Background: Under-enrollment in cancer trials remains a major barrier for advancing cancer research in part because few patients are offered clinical trials and pre-screening is manual and laborious. One solution involves artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled centralized screening of patients, but this requires robust validation to facilitate trust and adoption. Methods: This is a retrospective study from a large community-academic hybrid cancer center comparing the performance of an AI system - Trial Recommendations using Intelligent Assessment to Guide Eligibility and Enrollment (TRIAGE) - to real-world enrollment using longitudinal electronic health records (EHRs), full versioned trial protocols, and expert clinical research coordinator (CRC) adjudication at the trial- and criterion-levels. The train set was composed of 629 patients and 4,094 patient-trial pairs. A large language model (LLM)-only solution was used to predict successful patient enrollment based only on answers to individual eligibility criteria. Next, a machine learning-based approach was used to train the model on top of LLM responses to yield robust, consistent decision rules across patients, with priorities set by the real-world behavior of CRCs. The test set was comprised of 198 patients with breast, lung, and pancreatic cancers and 793 patient-trial pairs. A stratified random sample of 100 patient-trial pairs (83 patients, 21 trials) underwent manual CRC adjudication. The primary outcomes were sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), and Cohen’s κ for trial-level eligibility using a predefined trial match threshold of 0.40, and accuracy for criterion-level decisions. Performance evaluations were based on a binary classification: eligible or potentially eligible vs. ineligible. Results: In the training set, TRIAGE demonstrated 72% sensitivity and 90% specificity for trial enrollment. The table summarizes performance metrics in the test set for trial-level eligibility across 3 trial match thresholds. Criterion-level evaluation across 1,770 adjudications showed 93.1% raw agreement, improving to 94.2% after structured re-adjudication; 10/25 (40%) initial CRC discordances were overturned in favor of the AI decision. Conclusions: TRIAGE accurately determined trial-level eligibility from real-world EHR data with high performance and strong criterion-level agreement for oncology protocols. The system surfaced potential missed enrollment opportunities and supports adjustable trial-level decision thresholds. Prospective studies of TRIAGE implementation into research workflows are ongoing. Trial Match Threshold Sensitivity Specificity PPV NPV Cohen’s κ 0.13 (max Sensitivity) 98.7% 97.6% 91.2% 99.7% 0.84 0.40 (study threshold) 78.3% 98.5% 92.6% 94.8% 0.68 0.62 (max Specificity) 39.3% 100% 100% 87.0% 0.45

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Publication Details

Journal
Journal of Clinical Oncology
Published
2026-05-27
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1200/jco.2026.44.16_suppl.1501
Primary Topic
Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
Type
article
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article

Expert validation of an artificial intelligence–enabled trial matching solution using real-world data from patients with cancer.

Jai N. Patel, Carol Farhangfar, Wei Sha, Ferdous Ahmed et al.
Journal of Clinical Oncology
Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
article

Expert validation of an artificial intelligence–enabled trial matching solution using real-world data from patients with cancer.

Jai N. Patel, Carol Farhangfar, Wei Sha, Ferdous Ahmed, Michael M. Maher, Patrick Jongeneel, Pranav Singh, Ruben A. Mesa, Melani Terry, Shrujal Baxi, Peter M. Voorhees, Victoria Morris, Ognjen Nikolic, Charumathi Subramanian, Phillip Butera, Alexa Zappas, Robyn Yano
article en

Abstract

1501 Background: Under-enrollment in cancer trials remains a major barrier for advancing cancer research in part because few patients are offered clinical trials and pre-screening is manual and laborious. One solution involves artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled centralized screening of patients, but this requires robust validation to facilitate trust and adoption. Methods: This is a retrospective study from a large community-academic hybrid cancer center comparing the performance of an AI system - Trial Recommendations using Intelligent Assessment to Guide Eligibility and Enrollment (TRIAGE) - to real-world enrollment using longitudinal electronic health records (EHRs), full versioned trial protocols, and expert clinical research coordinator (CRC) adjudication at the trial- and criterion-levels. The train set was composed of 629 patients and 4,094 patient-trial pairs. A large language model (LLM)-only solution was used to predict successful patient enrollment based only on answers to individual eligibility criteria. Next, a machine learning-based approach was used to train the model on top of LLM responses to yield robust, consistent decision rules across patients, with priorities set by the real-world behavior of CRCs. The test set was comprised of 198 patients with breast, lung, and pancreatic cancers and 793 patient-trial pairs. A stratified random sample of 100 patient-trial pairs (83 patients, 21 trials) underwent manual CRC adjudication. The primary outcomes were sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), and Cohen’s κ for trial-level eligibility using a predefined trial match threshold of 0.40, and accuracy for criterion-level decisions. Performance evaluations were based on a binary classification: eligible or potentially eligible vs. ineligible. Results: In the training set, TRIAGE demonstrated 72% sensitivity and 90% specificity for trial enrollment. The table summarizes performance metrics in the test set for trial-level eligibility across 3 trial match thresholds. Criterion-level evaluation across 1,770 adjudications showed 93.1% raw agreement, improving to 94.2% after structured re-adjudication; 10/25 (40%) initial CRC discordances were overturned in favor of the AI decision. Conclusions: TRIAGE accurately determined trial-level eligibility from real-world EHR data with high performance and strong criterion-level agreement for oncology protocols. The system surfaced potential missed enrollment opportunities and supports adjustable trial-level decision thresholds. Prospective studies of TRIAGE implementation into research workflows are ongoing. Trial Match Threshold Sensitivity Specificity PPV NPV Cohen’s κ 0.13 (max Sensitivity) 98.7% 97.6% 91.2% 99.7% 0.84 0.40 (study threshold) 78.3% 98.5% 92.6% 94.8% 0.68 0.62 (max Specificity) 39.3% 100% 100% 87.0% 0.45

Journal of Clinical OncologyVol. 44(16_suppl)
Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist (US), Levine Cancer Institute (US), Atrium Medical Cente (US), Wake Forest Baptist Comprehensive Cancer Center
Openalex Percentile: Top 9%
Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
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