Extending the Query Language of a Data Warehouse for Patient Recruitment

Patient recruitment for clinical trials is a laborious task, as many texts have to be screened. Usually, this work is done manually and takes a lot of time. We have developed a system that automates the screening process. Besides standard keyword queries, the query language supports extraction of numbers, time-spans and negations. In a feasibility study for patient recruitment from a stroke unit with 40 patients, we achieved encouraging extraction rates above 95% for numbers and negations and ca. 86% for time spans.