University of Cincinnati professor collaborates with her son on stroke trials app

Clinical trials need to have strict patient eligibility requirements so researchers can confidently compare and analyze the effectiveness of the intervention they are testing. But when multiple trials are ongoing, each with different eligibility requirements, it can sometimes become cumbersome for doctors to filter data to determine the best fit for each patient. 

In 2021, the University of Cincinnati’s Stroke Team developed a flowchart to assist doctors in finding the right trial. Pooja Khatri, MD, thought it would be more user friendly as a mobile app, but she didn’t have the time or coding expertise to make that a reality.  

So Khatri turned to her son, Ajai Nelson, who had recently graduated from Walnut Hills High School and was preparing for his freshman year at Oberlin College.  

“I had nothing else I needed to be doing that summer, so I made a prototype within a few days,” said Nelson, now a senior at Oberlin. “Then my mom gave me some feedback and showed it to people, and in the fall of 2021, people at UC started using it a bit.” 

Now, what began as Nelson’s summer project has grown into a useful tool for nearly 30 research institutions across the country — and a professional collaboration between mother and son. 

Nelson said he had already been programming for quite a while when his mom presented the idea for the app to him, so he was excited to take on the challenge. 

“I was interested in programming for the same reason I was interested in math,” he said. “But then eventually I started realizing around my junior and senior years of high school that, at this point, I’m good enough that I actually have the ability to make things that can be useful to people.”  

When clinicians open the app, they are prompted to enter various patient data points, including the date and time the patient was last known to be well and what type of stroke they had.  

After answering all of the questions, the app lists all trials the patient might be eligible for, a link to the trial website and contact information for trial coordinators. Additionally, doctors can directly call or text the coordinators through the app. 

“I personally find it very useful,” said Khatri, professor, vice chair of research and division chief in the Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine at UC's College of Medicine; associate director of the UC Gardner Neuroscience Institute; and codirector of NIH StrokeNet’s National Coordinating Center. “Sometimes I already know they’re eligible for a given trial, but then it’s just a quick way to be able to click and text the relevant coordinator.” 

By September 2022, the app had expanded into institutions such as Yale University, Case Western Reserve University, University of Buffalo and the University of Virginia, with Nelson continuing to program and manage the app pro bono on top of his college course load. 

“Because my son made it, I didn't want to over-advertise it,” Khatri said. “People asked if I was starting a business, and I said no — we’re doing this because we want to make this work better.” 

The app originally only listed trials that were part of StrokeNet, but researchers said it was not as useful if other stroke trials open at their site weren’t included. As the workload of adding other trials grew, so did the team. 

Anthony Rogers, StrokeNet’s technical administrator, handles administrative aspects of the app, while Paul Wechsler, MD, instructor in UC’s College of Medicine and a UC Health physician, uses his clinical expertise to help Nelson interpret trial eligibility criteria.  

“Paul is very algorithmically minded, and he’s been helping Ajai distill new trials into the key features for patient eligibility that the app should be using in its algorithms,” Khatri said. 

“With Paul helping us, we have the process so streamlined that a lot of times it will take me 15 minutes to add a new trial,” Nelson said.

A total of 29 institutions now utilize the app, and it has been used more than 250 times since Nelson began tracking that data in March 2024. If the app were retrofitted to the original flowchart UC was using, he noted it would now include 484 possible sets of studies and more than 10,000 possible routes within the chart. 

Khatri and Nelson say they enjoy working on the app together, and it has introduced a new dynamic to their relationship. 

“A lot of it has been needing to ask my mom a question, and she doesn’t get around to it for a long time. It’s kind of funny that she’s my mom and it still takes time to get back to me,” Nelson joked. 

Khatri said she’s grateful to be able to share her work with her son. “It’s amazing for me as a mom to have a son who wants to work with me on something like this, because I feel like our work is so meaningful in terms of advancing stroke care,” Khatri said. “To have a son that has the capability he does to be able to contribute like this and to be excited about it, I feel really lucky and proud.”