{"id":608160,"date":"2024-06-07T14:00:19","date_gmt":"2024-06-07T18:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/sustainability-in-clinical-trials-purposeful-digitalization-is-key\/"},"modified":"2024-06-07T14:45:48","modified_gmt":"2024-06-07T18:45:48","slug":"sustainability-in-clinical-trials-purposeful-digitalization-is-key","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/sustainability-in-clinical-trials-purposeful-digitalization-is-key\/","title":{"rendered":"Sustainability in Clinical Trials: Purposeful Digitalization is Key","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\n

Julia Sundari, Senior Director of Clinical Design and Analytics, IQVIA<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In 2023, clinical development productivity rose the highest it has been since 2018, primarily due to an increase in clinical trial success rates in Phase I and III studies and related regulatory review across diseases areas.1<\/sup> This growth in clinical R&D is essential to ensuring there are more viable treatment options for patients in need globally. Along with the industrywide goal to advance healthcare with quickness and high quality, R&D stakeholders also aim to design and drive forward sustainable clinical trial practices for patients.<\/p>\n

While some fundamental drug development practices are necessary and clinical trial sponsors cannot shift away from them, these companies and their R&D partners, including contract research organizations (CROs), are committed to minimizing the environmental impact of their programs. And as in other aspects of R&D, these stakeholders are exploring new and innovative ways to make a noticeable change in sustainable practices for their trials.<\/p>\n

Digitized R&D<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The end-to-end digitalization of clinical trials is growing by the day, providing many takeaways on how technology-enabled solutions are helping to accelerate drug development with increased efficiencies and quality. With this digital transformation, it is worth exploring how integration of advanced technologies is creating more opportunities for sustainable trial practices.<\/p>\n

Remote data monitoring (reducing travel and conserving resources)<\/strong><\/p>\n

During COVID-19, there was an uptake of decentralized trial (DCT) and hybrid trial designs. We learned a great deal about how intuitive cloud-based DCT platforms and other technologies helped effectively coordinate research and workflows to support patient, site, and study team communication and capture study activity (e.g., visit coordination and remote data monitoring) without putting patient data at risk. This also reduced site visits for patients and clinical research associates (CRAs).<\/p>\n

As trials continue to move toward centralized monitoring for site support, CRAs can monitor data remotely while reducing travel to and from sites and conserving resources (e.g., CRA time). In some cases, travel to sites can be reduced by up to 30%. In traditional ways of working, CRAs may physically be onsite, but most of their time sometimes goes to time-consuming tasks, including manual data input from multiple sources and correcting electronic case report forms, which can leave gaps in data oversight. With centralized monitoring, sponsors can leverage targeted analytics using artificial intelligence (AI)\/machine learning modeling to mine incoming data remotely and consistently gauge risk-mitigation to course-correct quicker while also being environmentally sensitive.<\/p>\n

As data capture processes go digital with more seamless flow from electronic medical records to electronic data capture, and as the use of connected devices and wearable technologies in clinical trials grows, site teams, CRAs, and study teams will have holistic views of data for oversight at any time. This tech-enabled data flow reduces the reliance on manually inputting data and paper-based documentation and review activities.<\/p>\n

Site and patient experience digitalization (conserving resources)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Beyond collecting data directly from patients, there are multiple clinical trial activities that traditionally were paper-based for patients that are now available in various digitized formats. Not only are the digital solutions noted ahead designed to reduce patient burdens to trial participation and improve experiences, but they also reduce paper production and related waste:<\/p>\n