Over the years since its inception, the digital transformation wave has been and continues to reshape nearly every aspect of our lives. This is from how we make things to how we perform our research, including research on both medical devices and patients and clinical development. With the ever-growing population, many patients require more access to clinical research, which isn’t limited to patients only but also pharmaceutical companies, medical professionals, and researchers.
One challenge that most clinical trials face is that they are mostly centralized, thus limiting access to those who need it most. Therefore, to curb this problem, most study teams have switched to decentralized clinical trial platforms, mainly because of the multiple benefits that decentralized research platforms offer.
Therefore, this post will teach you about decentralized clinical trial platforms, the benefits they offer, and the difference between a centralized clinical trial and a decentralized clinical trial platform. Keep reading.
What is a clinical trial platform?
First, before diving into what a clinical trial platform is, we must first understand what a clinical trial entails. So, a clinical trial is a prospective behavioral or biomedical research study conducted by medical research study teams or pharmaceutical companies to determine answers to certain questions and collect real-world data on behavioral or biomedical interventions.
Most clinical trials are about advancing or existing medical devices, treatments, or therapeutic areas. Therefore, a clinical trial platform is a cloud-enabled, web-based digital platform that supports clinical trial management, data collection and reporting, and patient engagement. These platforms can also be used for patient recruitment, where interested patients upload their real-time personal data. Based on the proposed patient recruitment protocols, the platform selects patients best suited to medical research.
The two types of clinical trial platforms are centralized platforms and decentralized platforms. As stated above, most study teams prefer decentralized trial platforms over centralized ones due to the benefits afforded to them. It is also critical to remember that not all clinical studies and trials are qualified for complete decentralization. As a result, some patients need to visit a clinic equipped with appropriate equipment. For example, if the trial involves you taking an MRI scan, you must visit a facility with an MRI machine.
Benefits Of Using Decentralized Clinical Trials Platforms
Increased participant pools
Clinical research always benefits from a degree of diversity: a prominent example was during the COVID-19 pandemic and different strains of COVID from different regions, and that’s what a decentralized clinical platform offers clinical trial teams since it can be accessed by a wider audience.
Also, decentralized clinical trials allow for virtual visits; hence there won’t be a need for your patients to travel, thus allowing you an even wider pool of patients.
Improved patient experience
One main problem with centralized trials is that they aren’t flexible. For example, since a centralized trial is run from a single point, patients have to book an appointment to see the doctor even during an emergency. This is due to limited resources. But with decentralized trials, the personnel involved are usually a wide network and located near the patients and sometimes even conduct home visits; therefore, if a patient requires a checkup, they don’t have to wait for long before receiving it
Quality findings
As stated above, diversity is the key to successful clinical research. Since the patient pool involved in decentralized trials is usually quite large, clinical research will boast much more accurate data quality.
This is mainly because with multiple test subjects, pharmaceutical companies and research sites can determine how their medical devices or research react and affect people of different characteristics and from different regions.
Differences Between Centralized and Decentralized Clinical Platforms
Data collection
In centralized platforms, data is manually collected during an in-patient appointment session at a single point in time, but with decentralized platforms, data is collected remotely and at any time, thus leading to a large amount of data being collected
Patients
Every time the patient wants to see the physician or study team, he or she must schedule an appointment which is usually limited. However, with decentralized platforms, meetings can take place remotely without the need for an appointment.
Data
Data is usually collected and entered into multiple systems and repeatedly in centralized systems. However, with decentralized systems, the patient’s data is entered into the system once and can be accessed across all processes and from anywhere.
Also, in centralized systems, data collection is performed at set times, while in decentralized systems, data is captured in real-time.
1 thought on “Decentralizing Clinical Trials: Reaching the Unreachable”
Comments are closed.