Clinical Trials Feed

A WordPress plugin that pulls condition-relevant studies from ClinicalTrials.gov and displays them on your site, kept fresh automatically, with optional plain-language summaries generated through your own LLM API key.

No CDN dependencies. No telemetry. All trial data is stored locally in your WordPress database.

The canonical, WordPress.org-formatted readme is readme.txt. This file is the GitHub-facing overview.

Features

• Auto-sync — A daily scheduled job (powered by Action Scheduler) fetches and upserts trials from the ClinicalTrials.gov API v2. A Sync now button is available in the admin for on-demand updates.
• Gutenberg block + [skmctf_trials] shortcode — Drop trials anywhere with full server-side rendering.
• Filter bar — Visitors filter by status, phase, state/province, and country. Works without JavaScript (progressive enhancement).
• Grid or list view — Show trials as a responsive card grid or a compact list. The admin sets the default under Settings → Display → Default view; visitors get a grid/list toggle and their choice is remembered per browser. The correct view renders server-side, so it works without JavaScript.
• Optional themes (light & dark) — Two bundled out-of-the-box front-end skins, Clinical (cool, clinical) and Patient-friendly (warm), each available in light and dark, alongside the default Skeleton. Enable under Settings → Theme & appearance. Themes are pure CSS over the existing markup, scoped to the plugin's own listing and single-trial pages (never the surrounding site); web fonts (Public Sans, Newsreader, Mulish) are bundled locally under the SIL Open Font License — no external requests.
• Single trial pages — A patient/caregiver-first detail page: status, conditions, sponsor, plain-language summary, eligibility, and a locations map with a collapsible list.
• Optional plain-language fields (bring your own key) — With an Anthropic or OpenAI API key, the plugin generates, at sync time, a plain-language summary plus three patient-friendly fields per trial: What this study is testing, Who can join, and Questions to ask your doctor. Generated content is cached as post meta — there are no LLM calls at page-render time. You are billed directly by the LLM provider; your key never leaves your site.
• Optional map view — Leaflet + OpenStreetMap, bundled locally (no CDN, no Google Maps). Off by default.
• Safe reconciliation — A drop-ratio guard prevents accidental bulk removal of trial posts if the upstream feed returns unexpectedly few results.

Requirements

• WordPress 6.4+
• PHP 7.4+

Installation

1. Copy this directory into wp-content/plugins/ (or install the packaged zip).
2. Activate Clinical Trials Feed in Plugins.
3. Go to Settings → Clinical Trials Feed, set your condition(s) and display options, and click Sync now.
4. (Optional) Add an Anthropic or OpenAI API key to enable plain-language summaries and the patient-friendly fields, then Sync now again to populate them.

Data source

All clinical trial data is retrieved from ClinicalTrials.gov, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. A "Data from ClinicalTrials.gov" credit is always displayed on the front end.

Privacy

The plugin does not phone home or collect usage data. The only outbound requests are:

• ClinicalTrials.gov API — on each sync, from your server, containing only a condition search query.
• Your chosen LLM provider (only if you supply an API key) — trial fields are sent to generate summaries; your key is stored in your site and never transmitted to the plugin author.
• OpenStreetMap tiles (only if the map view is enabled) — loaded in the visitor's browser to render the map.

Development

Install dev dependencies and run the checks:

composer install

composer test:unit      # Brain Monkey unit tests (no WordPress required)
composer phpcs          # WordPress Coding Standards
composer phpcbf         # Auto-fix coding-standard violations

Integration tests

Integration tests run against a real WordPress test database. One-time setup installs the WP test suite and a throwaway database:

# Standard (requires Subversion):
bash bin/install-wp-tests.sh wordpress_test <db-user> <db-pass> <db-host> latest

# Subversion-free alternative (e.g. Git for Windows / LocalWP):
bash bin/install-wp-tests-git.sh wordpress_test <db-user> <db-pass> <db-host> <wp-version>

export WP_TESTS_DIR=/tmp/wordpress-tests-lib
composer test:integration

License

GPL-2.0-or-later. See readme.txt for the full plugin header and changelog.