# A live 'seats available' feed for trial slots, like airline inventory

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr1-live-trial-slot-api/  
OnCo record `idea-tr1-live-trial-slot-api` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Trial registries say a study is 'recruiting' long after it stopped, and never say whether a slot is actually open this week. A live feed of open slots per arm and site would let clinicians refer with confidence.

## Summary

Sponsors and sites publish, via a standard API, per-arm and per-site slot availability updated at least weekly (open, waitlist, closed, expected reopening), consumed by matching tools, genomic report generators and the public registry. Incentive: registries flag trials whose status has not been confirmed within 30 days as 'status unverified'.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Referrals made against live slot data will convert to enrolment at a higher rate and fewer patients will be referred to closed arms, measured by referral-outcome tracking at participating centres.
- Rationale: Stale status is a leading cause of failed referrals and of clinician distrust of matching tools. Inventory visibility solved analogous problems in travel and retail.
- Proposed test: Pilot with three sponsors and one regional referral network; compare referral-to-enrolment conversion and wasted referrals against the prior year.
- Maturity: speculative
- Actor: engineering

## Sources

- Bottleneck evidence (Trials enrol too few, too slowly): Unger et al., Systematic review of barriers to cancer trial participation (JNCI 2019): https://doi.org/10.1093/jnci/djy221

## Connected records

- collections: [ClinicalTrials.gov](https://onco.cc/collections/clinicaltrials-gov/)
- technologies: [AI trial matching & clinical decision support](https://onco.cc/technologies/ai-trial-matching/)
- companies: [Cancer Commons](https://onco.cc/companies/cancer-commons/)
- bottlenecks: [Data silos](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-data-silos/), [Trials enrol too few, too slowly](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-trial-enrolment/)

---
JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/idea-tr1-live-trial-slot-api.json