How to set up email alerts for clinical trials in Canada?

[Joan Tu]

I am looking for studies in Canada related to allergic contact dermatitis which may be recruiting participants, however I could not subscribe nor sign up to email alerts on either of the websites below.

Health Canada's Clinical Trial Database:
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-health-products/drug-products/health-canada-clinical-trials-database.html

Clinical Trials.gov
https://clinicaltrials.gov/

Since I am in Alberta, I could subscribe to the newsletter at the University of Calgary and at BeTheCure.ca. However on BeTheCure form, there was no option for skin conditions in the picklist and no way to contact them about this.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how to subscribe to alerts or to improve the patient experience related to this?

[Sandra Holdsworth]

@Joan-Tu try Save Your SKIN https://www.saveyourskin.ca/ OR Skin Canada https://skincanada.org/

[Chris Johnston]

@Joan-Tu It looks like neither site have a notification option, which is pretty poor. You could try to contact them and request the feature, though who knows how long that might take, even if they agree.

One alternative would be to set up a Google Alert with the text:

"allergic+contact+dermatitis" research
or
"allergic+contact+dermatitis" clinical trials

Under options you can choose Canada as the region and then set the frequency you prefer e.g. daily or weekly. It would catch more than just the site you want, but that might be a good thing.

Editing to add:

Just found a service that might help: https://visualping.io/

First go to the Clinical Trials site and run the search. Then save the URL including the search parameters. Then go to Visualping and paste the entire URL into their form. It will bring up a snapshot of the page, and you need to specify the area it needs to look for changes. Then add your email and the frequency you want to be contacted.
Looks like you can set up 5 sites to monitor on a free account.

[Joan Tu]

@Sandra-Holdsworth Thank you!

[Joan Tu]

@Chris-Johnston Thank you! I will try out those features.