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

Reusing the data from healthcare information systems can effectively facilitate clinical trials (CTs). How to select candidate patients eligible for CT recruitment criteria is a central task. Related work either depends on DBA (database administrator) to convert the recruitment criteria to native SQL queries or involves the data mapping between a standard ontology/information model and individual data source schema. This paper proposes an alternative computer-aided CT recruitment paradigm, based on syntax translation between different DSLs (domain-specific languages). In this paradigm, the CT recruitment criteria are first formally represented as production rules. The referenced rule variables are all from the underlying database schema. Then the production rule is translated to an intermediate query-oriented DSL (e.g., LINQ). Finally, the intermediate DSL is directly mapped to native database queries (e.g., SQL) automated by ORM (object-relational mapping).