A breast cancer diagnosis can turn your world upside down in an instant. Suddenly, you’re faced with an overwhelming flood of emotions, as well as a long list of unfamiliar medical terms and options for treatment. Along with the standard treatment options, your doctor might mention the option of participating in a clinical trial.
Clinical trials are research studies that can offer patients access to promising new treatments, diagnostic tools or screening options before they are widely available to the public. In most cancer treatment clinical trials, participants receive either the new treatment or the current standard of care. In breast cancer clinical trials there is no risk of only receiving a placebo, or sugar pill. However, sometimes, you may get the standard treatment plus a placebo rather than the standard treatment plus the new treatment that’s being studied.
By participating in a clinical trial, you can have access to promising new therapies while also having the chance to improve care for other patients in the future. But where do you begin? How can you sort through all the possible options to find a clinical trial that best matches your unique diagnosis and personal needs?
Today, new technologies are making this process much easier. As AI continues to transform many aspects of our daily lives, it is also emerging as a powerful tool in breast cancer care. This includes helping patients and their care teams navigate an ever-changing research landscape to identify the most promising clinical trials that may be a good fit.
How Does An AI-Powered Search Work?
AI can make finding breast cancer clinical trials faster and easier. Instead of manually searching through hundreds of studies, AI can quickly review the information a person provides and compare it with the requirements for thousands of current clinical trials.
To help you find the best-matching clinical trials, an AI-matching tool may request information about your breast cancer and your overall health. This can include information about your diagnosis, tumor stage, hormone receptor status (estrogen and progesterone receptors), HER2 status, genetic or biomarker test results, your age, treatments you’ve already received or other health conditions.
In just a few minutes, the tool can quickly scan large databases of clinical trials and narrow the results based on your specific personal details, helping you and your doctor discover care options that might otherwise be overlooked. Some AI tools score and rank the best clinical trial options, ensuring the best possible matches are listed first.
It is important to remember that a match made by AI is not always 100% accurate, and AI tools may match you to clinical trials that you are not eligible for. Also, be careful about what personal information you include in your search. Before entering personal health information into an AI tool, review its privacy policy and understand how your information may be collected, stored and used, as anything you share with AI is not under the same privacy regulations as a health care provider or medically vetted site.
How Can I Start My Own AI-Powered Search?
Many people diagnosed with breast cancer don’t know that AI-powered search tools exist, let alone that they can be used to find clinical trials. If you are just getting started and are unsure of where to begin your search, you can get guidance and recommendations from your health care team.
Komen’s Patient Care Center offers clinical trial support from patient navigators, including educational materials and information about current clinical trials. Komen’s Clinical Trials page provides resources and links to additional non-AI clinical trial-matching services, while Komen’s About Breast Cancer (ABC) pages offer trusted educational information and questions you may have about clinical trials.
If you have access to a computer and internet service, you can use one of many free AI chatbot services to help you locate AI-powered search tools. You can also perform a basic online search for reputable clinical trial matching sites using search terms like “breast cancer clinical trial AI search” or “AI clinical trial finder.” Komen recommends that you discuss any results that come from these searches with your health care team before making decisions about clinical trial participation.
Your Health Care Provider Can Also Use AI
Doctors, hospitals and clinics are also beginning to use AI to make their searches for clinical trials faster and more thorough. Instead of relying on a doctor’s memory of available studies or requiring someone to manually review a long list of trial requirements, AI tools can scan all the details from a patient’s medical records to help identify trials that may be a good fit. Erika Crosby, Ph.D., a Komen-funded researcher and immunologist at Duke University, is already seeing how AI search tools can benefit doctors and researchers in the breast cancer space.
“We’re using it to search and find appropriate clinical trials for patients, so it’s not relying on the doctor knowing what’s available, or the doctor knowing the doctor that’s running the trial,” she says. “You look broadly at what clinical trials patients could match to.”
This can help care teams spot good options earlier, reduce the chance that a promising trial is missed and start more informed conversations with patients about whether a study may be worth exploring. It may also help increase enrollment in future studies.
“I know we’re really excited about that because clinical trial enrollment is one of the big hurdles, and I think getting the word out or finding appropriate people for them is definitely a hurdle,” Dr. Crosby says. “That’s a big use in the clinic at Duke right now, too.”
Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of AI
While AI has many benefits, it is not a perfect tool. An AI search may not find every available clinical trial that could be appropriate for you or show the most up-to-date enrollment status of a study. It cannot consider every personal factor, like an individual’s complex medical history, accessibility to the study site, insurance coverage or responsibilities at home. This is why AI should be used as a tool to support and not replace the important discussions you have with your health care team.
AI has the potential to make clinical trials more accessible for everyone. However, to be most beneficial, it’s important that it is easy to use and available to people in different languages, levels of digital access, transportation options and experiences within the health care system. The goal of AI is to help more patients learn about and enroll in clinical trials, not create new barriers to participating in them.
Many people are confused or overwhelmed by the medical information they find online, and this prevents them from seeking educational materials about their diagnosis. AI can help reduce these barriers by summarizing complex information in clear, plain language that is easier for patients and caregivers to understand.
In addition, some AI tools can scan records across multiple health care systems, flagging eligible people in under resourced communities who might otherwise be overlooked or excluded. By identifying more people from these communities for clinical trials, AI can help increase trial participation, while also ensuring participants reflect the diversity of the greater breast cancer community.
Taking Next Steps
Before you begin your search for clinical trials using AI, prepare by gathering helpful information. You can start by asking your doctor for a summary of your diagnosis and treatment history. Be sure to have a record of your breast cancer subtype, lymph node status, tumor stage, biomarkers, previous treatments and any other major health conditions. If you don’t already have a place where you can collect and keep information about your diagnosis, Komen’s “Breast Cancer Diagnosis Discussion Guide” is a great resource to have ready for every conversation:
It’s also a good idea to decide in advance how far you can travel to participate in a clinical trial. Do you have the resources or time to travel outside of your community? Brainstorm any other potential questions or concerns you have and discuss them with your doctor.
If you are interested in learning more, start by downloading our “Questions to Ask Your Doctor About AI and Clinical Trials” form, which provides some great topics to get the conversation started:
Take our brief survey and browse the rest of the Spotlight on Clinical Trials series here.
For personalized assistance from a navigator, contact the Susan G. Komen Helpline.
Call 1-877-465-6636 or email helpline@komen.org to get started.
The Helpline is available Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. – 7 p.m. (ET) and Friday, 9 a.m. – 6 p.m. (ET).
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For clinical trial information, email clinicaltrialinfo@komen.org.
Explore More:
- Listen to the Real Pink Podcast: Leveraging AI in Breast Cancer Research
