Computer-Aided Clinical Trial Recruitment Based on Domain-Specific Language Translation: A Case Study of Retinopathy of Prematurity

Figure 1

Comparison of the patient query paradigms used in clinical trial recruitment (demonstrated in the case of relational database). Paradigm A depends on clinical engineers or DBA to translate clinical researchers’ natural language representation of recruitment criteria into database-specific query language, for example, SQL. Paradigm B uses SDE tools to author formally represented criteria based on a sharable model. The criteria are then translated to SQL by the underlying mapping between the sharable model and individual database. Paradigm C uses SDE to author recruitment criteria in the form of the production rule, which is then translated into LINQ syntax. LINQ to SQL conversion is naturally supported by ORM-like technologies. DBA = database administrator; SDE = structured data entry; DSL = domain-specific language; LINQ = language-integrated query; SQL = structured query language; ORM = object-relational mapping.