Dan Hydes, CEO of IgniteData explores the key technology trends accelerating patient recruitment that will ultimately minimise long-term disruption.
Health technology
Like many industries, the impact of Covid-19 on the UK life sciences industry cannot be understated. From suspended enrolment to delayed or cancelled trials - as we navigate new lockdowns, pharma companies and clinical research organisations can expect further disruption.
Still, patient recruitment remains a priority. How can those of us leading trials create new strategies to accelerate the process, ensuring studies get back on track? By underpinning key tech strategies, we believe that pharma companies and CROs can adapt trial design and informed recruitment techniques to enable a rapid recovery and vitally, get new drugs to market faster.
An industry in recovery
First off, let’s contextualise this with some specifics shaping industry recovery. There’s a handful of key challenges at play, specifically relating to efficiencies within clinical studies. It’s by overcoming these that we can unlock backlogs and ensure new trials get underway as quickly as possible.
We’ll start with the need to recruit patients from smaller and more heterogeneous populations; a failure to recruit the right patients, or in some cases any patients, has resulted in missed deadlines and non-starter trials. It’s a price the industry can’t afford to pay right now. It came to light in particular with trials for potential Covid-19 vaccinations, and the need to identify patients from within specific community profiles. At the same time, trials often deal with vulnerable populations who are most at risk from exposure to Covid-19. This means the need to risk score patients as early as possible is a further consideration.
A key challenge when it comes to reaching new clinical trial patients is, understandably, trust – this year more than ever. We all recognise the need to ensure individual patient safety as vital to achieving successful outcomes as well as accelerating development programmes. Effective communication is essential here. A cohesive, patient-centric message - across both primary and secondary care – will boost patient engagement, build trust and will maintain full potential within patient recruitment. Technical competence, empathy, communicating with clarity and respect are all essential as is ensuring the level of information available to the patient is informing without being overwhelming.
This is where well applied data comes into its own. It’s how we turn data into compelling, relatable stories that connect patients to outcomes, engagement and positive decision-making. And where we need to direct resources.
Finally, a gap in rich and real-time data - for both site selection and patient status – has been a barrier to trial success. When we integrate real-time data we improve our understanding of a patient’s history, their drivers and can personalise their experience event further. We’ll look at the role of virtualisation and impact of quality data in conducting recruitment and studies later on in this piece.
Innovating recruitment strategies with data
Connected AI-enhanced as well as digital and virtual technologies are on track to transform clinical trials. This means driving speed, safety, effectiveness and vitally, patient-centricity – more necessary than ever as trial owners look at ways to reduce costs and increase productivity. And, by using the data capability we have in the industry, we can expand our search for eligible clinical subjects even more, breaking out of traditional approaches.
We’ve already looked at how Covid-19 has meant a greater requirement for patient pre-selection and pre-screening. This is coupled with the need to make trial enrolment easier for patients. AI and predictive analytics can help us unpack deeper insights too. When we understand key data points such as motivators, previous experiences, even behavioural tendencies, we can weigh the patients most suited for the trial, supporting recruitment and successful retention. At the same time, AI can filter out existing biases creating a far more accurate picture.
Deliver faster patient recruitment with technology
Each day a clinical trial is delayed can cost up to $600k. For trial managers, accelerating their data-led approach to studies will transform patient recruitment strategies.
Let’s think about the potential of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) here, and it’s potential for supporting study feasibility. The previously untapped sources of eligible patients open up larger and new patient pools, sometimes accessing patient groups that might previously have been overlooked. And, with pre-screening, you have even more control over the final patient recruitment process. Using this data resource smartly gives trial managers a multi-layered understanding of patients supporting a more predictable trial outcome and manages costs.
We expect to see more in remote, data-driven approaches in the post Covid-19 world too, more automation, more efficient study delivery. Additional benefits include allowing for greater levels of safety and more accurate forecasting. Because bottlenecks are minimised too, trials start quicker, delivering valid results faster. Which is where all of us want to be in clinical trials.
2020 has changed the face of clinical research. More than ever we need to invest in the delivery of faster, better quality studies to revolutionise trials and support NHS efficiencies. And by embracing these key data trends, we can support the industry on its fast-track back to recovery.