How our scopes are chosen

What a scope is

A scope is a curated therapeutic profile — a disease area (e.g. rheumatology, glomerular nephrology) with its own set of indications, canonical terminology in Portuguese and English, a site map for Brazil, and a continuously-refreshed list of active studies from ClinicalTrials.gov. Each scope surfaces on both TrialReferrals (clinician-facing, multi-language) and A Busca da Cura (patient-facing, Portuguese only).

How we pick a scope

We evaluate candidate areas against two lenses:

• Patient viability. Are there enough actively-recruiting studies in the area to make the scope useful to real patients? Are the conditions ones where a trial is a meaningful option (versus areas already well-served by standard of care)? Are patients motivated to look?
• Content sustainability. Can we keep the scope accurate without shortcuts? This means stable terminology, indications with consistent eligibility patterns, and a sponsor landscape we can follow over time. If a scope would require constant firefighting to stay correct, we don’t launch it.

Lifecycle

• Candidate. An area we think is a plausible next scope. No content built yet.
• Research. We pull the raw trial data, map indications, build the terminology, draft the patient-facing language.
• Launch. A rheumatologist or clinician in the field reviews the draft. Once approved, the scope ships to both TR and ABDC.
• Maintenance. Trial data is refreshed continuously. Terminology and indications are revisited whenever a material change shows up in the source data.

Editorial independence

We do not accept payment from sponsors, sites, or CROs to include, exclude, highlight, or reorder trials within a scope. The study list for any scope is drawn directly from ClinicalTrials.gov. If that ever changes we will say so clearly on every scope page.

Questions?

If you think a therapeutic area deserves to be a scope — or you spot something wrong on an existing one — get in touch.