Tag: virtual clinical trials

The Future of Decentralized Clinical Trials Starts with a Patient-first Design Approach | Blog

The biggest benefit of Decentralized Clinical Trials (DCT) is the opportunity to enhance the patient experience, but the process is rife with challenges that create disengagement. The problem is not that patients are unengaged, but rather the vendor products are not always very engaging. The solution lies in undertaking a patient-first approach. Discover the tenets of a patient-first design approach in this second blog in our continuing coverage of this timely topic.

The pandemic has propelled decentralized clinical trials (DCT) into the mainstream, and multiple enterprises have transitioned into the virtual model for conducting clinical trials. Both enterprises and DCT vendors have stated that improved patient experience is the biggest benefit of the decentralized model. What do enterprises mean when they talk about patient experience? Read our blog, How Decentralized Clinical Trials Put the Patient Experience at the Forefront, to find out.

To deliver a superior patient experience and derive maximum benefit from this model of conducting trials, enterprises and vendors must be aware of the patient-facing challenges that might pose major hindrances. A closer look at the top challenges will help businesses develop effective measures to improve patient engagement and retention.

Major patient-facing challenges

The entire remote model has reduced in-person interactions. Insufficient communication from sites and sponsors often leads to disengagement among patients. The human touch, an important psychological aspect in healthcare, goes missing in this model. Added to this is the burden of learning about new products and technologies.

Patients have very limited digital literacy and may find it extremely difficult to operate a new sensor, a smartphone, or an application. Vendors are struggling to develop  robust training and support programs while enterprise buyers are more concerned about patient education capabilities and post-implementation support in their sourcing criteria.

All these factors create a general sense of discomfort and disengagement among patients, thereby defeating the principal benefit that vendors and enterprises expect from a DCT solution.

How can vendors overcome patient-facing challenges?

Designing a patient-centric solution is the best way to address these challenges. Having a deeper understanding of patients’ journeys and their pain points, while involving them in solution design will lead to greater compliance and engagement. The following exhibit highlights the various tenets of a patient-first solution.

Exhibit 1: Tenets of a patient-first design approach

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Six aspects of a patient-first design approach

  • Empathetic: DCT solutions should portray a deep understanding of the needs, well-being, and interests of patients, fostering trust and emotional connection. Vendors need to map the entire trial journey and look at it more holistically rather than logistically. Incorporating patient feedback into designing solutions will reduce a lot of stress and burden on patients
  • Secured: Concerns with data security, compliance, and privacy have increased with the rise in DCT adoption. Patients fear the consequences of device and network hacking, data leaks, and unauthorized access to data. DCT vendors must incorporate stringent security and compliance measures, secure the networks, and prevent all types of unauthorized access. With precise security measures in place, patients will feel safer with their data and will be more willing to share data for clinical research
  • Adaptable: DCT solutions must be able to incorporate the changing patient context, needs, and preferences to build fluid experiences. The same solutions should be adaptable and scalable as per the study requirement, ensuring a consistent patient experience and providing long-term sustainability
  • Engaging: Delivering engaging content is the best way to keep patients motivated in this digital world. Interactive educational materials, timely communication of trial progress (lay summaries), and patient reports go a long way in increasing patient engagement and retention. Patients can be motivated by increasing their trial literacy, setting up patient advocacy boards, and rewarding them for their contributions to the trial
  • Personalized: A one-size-fits-all solution will not work as patient experience varies at each stage and with each individual. Individualized care and personalized solutions help in building trust, loyalty, and retention rates among patients. Giving patients the liberty to choose their treatment plans (wherever possible), creating patient-specific digital ads, and supporting patients via artificial intelligence (AI) assistants are some of the ways to incorporate personalization into clinical trials
  • Reciprocity: Patients, vendors, and enterprises should be encouraged to communicate and share relevant experiences. Beyond trial periods, vendors and enterprises can engage patients with information on lifestyle, new developments on drugs or medical devices, upcoming trials, diet plans, etc. This type of communication will increase the willingness among patients to share personal data with AI systems as well as the scope with vendors, leading to more customized solutions that promote relevant and progressive experiences

Patients do not want to be treated as mere statistics. They want the touch of empathy and personalization, pushing DCT vendors to think more ‘humanly’ and add ‘emotional’ content while designing DCT solutions.

When all the above elements are incorporated in building DCT solutions, it will not only increase participation and adherence but also improve the brand value and bottom line for DCT vendors.

Over and above the empathy-backed approach toward creating a patient-centric solution, DCT vendors and enterprise buyers can look further at certain initiatives aimed at improving patient experience.

A sheer lack of awareness among patients regarding ongoing or planned trials exists. Enterprise buyers and vendors should spread information about upcoming clinical trials and steps to participate in them while promoting the ease of using digital technologies (via social media, newsroom, public releases, etc.). Home-care nurses or physicians still must make monthly calls or visits to motivate patients and add some scope for face-to-face interactions between patients and healthcare professionals.

Though the pivot or the integral enabler for DCT solutions is technology and connected systems, the focus should be on improving the patient experience and building the future towards a patient-intuitive smart DCT solution suite.

What are your views on how businesses can improve the patient experience? Reach out to [email protected] and [email protected] to discuss further.

How Decentralized Clinical Trials Put the Patient Experience at the Forefront | Blog

How Decentralized Clinical Trials Put the Patient Experience at the Forefront

With the COVID-19 pandemic accelerating the adoption of Decentralized Clinical Trials (DCT), the opportunity to deliver a patient-centric experience is viewed as a top benefit of this alternative mode of clinical trials that uses digital and remote technologies. What factors are enterprise buyers looking for DCT vendors to provide in their platforms to increase satisfaction and ultimately drive patient enrollments? Learn about the five factors that go into a “patient centered” experience in this blog.

When COVID-19 brought traditional clinical trials to an abrupt halt, Decentralized Clinical Trials (DCT) proved to be a savior for sponsors looking to safely restart their paused research activities. While DCTs have been around for a decade and are slowly gaining traction, the pandemic accelerated the use of these alternative methods to collect clinical trial data through sensors or remote monitoring devices carried by a patient.

The top reason for moving toward this model has been its patient-centered focus that makes it easier for more people from a broader geographic area to participate in trials without the need to visit a site.

The growing mainstream acceptance for DCTs has increased the appetite among clinical research organizations (CROs) and sponsors to adopt the latest technologies and virtual models for clinical trials. This has resulted in an uptick in innovation and DCT product adoption recently. We see DCT vendors increasingly focus on co-innovation, continuous product improvement, and market education to help clients get started on their DCT journey.

Top benefits of DCT adoption

Our Decentralized Clinical Trial Products PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2021 found the most promising benefit for enterprises to consider decentralizing their trials is the opportunity to enhance the patient experience – a benefit that two out of three DCT product buyers also agree with based on Everest Group interviews. Other advantages of DCTs include reducing trial costs and timelines, attracting a more diverse patient population, and capturing real-time data for trials.

With DCTs, patients can now take part in a study from the comfort of their homes, spend more time with their family members, and focus on work and other responsibilities. This mode of clinical trial also opens the door to the patients who suffer from mobility issues and allows sponsors to reach a global audience, increasing inclusivity and diversion.

This new patient-centric approach is driving increased enrollment and retention rates. With these valuable benefits, it is not surprising that having a people-orientated platform has become central to enterprise buyers in making their sourcing decisions – even more so than innovation or reviews from other buyers.

What do buyers want from DCT vendors?

What do enterprises buyers mean when they talk about patient experience? Multiple facets contribute to the notion of patient experience as presented in the exhibit below.

Exhibit 1: What enterprises buyers mean when they say patient experience

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Five factors to enhance patient experience with DCTs

Patient experience can be broken down into the following aspects:

  • User-friendly interface – The User Interface (UI) of DCT applications and devices must be simple, yet effective. They must provide clear instructions and display only relevant and concise content. It should be well organized, making all options easily accessible and ensuring that the application can be used with minimal explanation
  • Easy to set up platform/app – Patients should have an easy time setting up a wearable, sensor, or application. It should be intuitive even to an average user with limited exposure to digital devices. The device should be as close as possible to a ready-to-use mode
  • Smooth operation – The applications or devices should not pester patients with unnecessary notifications, malfunctions, or failures that would cause unwanted frustrations, resulting in reduced patient engagement. A smooth operation with minimal or zero disruption is the best-case scenario
  • Robust education and training – Patients come with different levels of digital literacy, and they need to be supported during the trials. They must be aware of how to enroll themselves for the trial, schedule appointments, feed in data, and get important information about their health and the trial. Sponsors can create the knowledge pool, conduct training sessions, and build artificial intelligence (AI) bots to provide education and training to patients
  • Multilingual app and support – To reach a global audience, multilingual offering and support must be available. The devices or applications used should provide instructions and information in the commonly used languages across the world. If a trial is geographically focused, the regional language should be configured in the device

Enterprises want DCT solutions to integrate smoothly into the daily lives and operations of patients. Patients should not feel isolated when doing the trial since the significant amount of digital literacy required might deter them from participating.

Vendors also need to be aware of the top patient-related challenges that might hinder them from elevating the patient experience through their products and services. Multiple challenges might lead to an inferior experience, resulting in disengagement and dropouts. DCT vendors and enterprise buyers must identify these challenges and take discrete steps to improve the patient experience and engagement.

Keep following this space as we dive into the top patient-related challenges and present initiatives aimed at improving the patient experience.

What are your views on the patient experience in DCTs? Reach out to [email protected] and [email protected] to discuss more.

The 2020s Will be the Decade of Virtual Clinical Trials | Blog

Virtual clinical trials – wherein trial data is collected through sensors or remote monitoring devices carried by the patient – can deliver many benefits to pharmaceutical companies, including cost savings, better patient recruitment and retention, and improved data quality.

In 2011, Pfizer conducted the first-ever randomized clinical study that managed participants using mobile phones and the internet. Over the next few years, the virtual approach waned because of limited success stories and the considerable upfront capital investment required for sensors and platforms.

However, with recent technological advances, the proliferation of wearables (smartwatch shipments have doubled in the past several years), and the FDA’s urging clinical trial sponsors to keep their research ongoing via telemedicine in the wake of the COVID-19 situation, the clinical trial landscape is ripe for disruption by virtual trials.

Indeed, as a bellwether of growing viability, the first virtual trial conference was conducted in December 2019. During the two-day event, the key discussion points were understanding the decentralized model, regulatory challenges for virtual trials, and ensuring compliance for such trials.

Enter technology companies and Big Tech

To build momentum and drive synergies, pharma companies have started to partner with technology companies to test the virtual trials model. For example, in 2018, Novartis, Sanofi, and UCB individually partnered with Science37, a tech company focused on patient-centric models for clinical research, on patient-friendly clinical trials at home. Boehringer Ingelheim followed suit in 2019.

Numerous startups that address some aspect of virtual trial requirements have emerged. For example, VirTrial, a telehealth platform that allows pharmaceutical companies and Contract Research Organizations (CROs) to create patient-centric trials by replacing some in-person visits with virtual visits, was founded in 2018. Since then, it has ramped up its capabilities and expanded internationally across 31 countries. Also in 2018, IQVIA, a leading CRO, enhanced its portfolio by launching virtual research solutions aimed at patient-centric trial design and execution. And today, numerous companies, including Clinpal, Covance, Medidata, ObvioHealth, PRA Life Sciences, and Transparency Life Sciences, boast their own virtual trial platforms.

Not wanting to be left out of this highly lucrative market, the Big Tech players are also exploring additional opportunities. For example, Apple, Best Buy, and J&J recently collaborated to launch a virtual study to gauge whether the Apple Watch could help reduce a person’s risk of stroke. Apple has also been involved in this space through its ResearchKit, an opensource software tool for medical researchers, doctors, and scientists to collect data on people suffering from diseases. Similarly, Verily, a Google sister company, has teamed up with pharma majors to modernize clinical trials and improve patient engagement and recruitment, and aggregate data from wearable devices.

Technological advances

Of course, much of virtual clinical trials’ success lies in the strength, viability, and rigor of the technologies that support them. The picture below shows the technologic interventions that enable the virtualization of a clinical trial.

Technologies that enable the virtualization of clinical trials

And fortunately, the above technological interventions speed up patient recruitment, improve patient adherence and monitoring, and eliminate data siloes by having a single source of truth in the cloud – ultimately enabling a smooth and virtual experience during a trial.

The road ahead

Delivery model and technological advances and co-innovation among stakeholder organizations have set the stage for trials to transition from traditional to virtual. Technology players are more capable, risk-tolerant, and knowledgeable than before, leading to increased trust and synergies with pharma companies. While pharma companies are resorting to the motto of “fail fast, win cheap,” virtual trials hold great promise to revolutionize the trial landscape. And what better time than now, when the field is ready, and the fruit is ripe?

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