The timeline for bringing a new drug to the market is long and complicated. A single trial can stretch out for years, involving hundreds of sites worldwide and gathering data from thousands of patients. The process is so complex that pharmaceutical companies have been understandably slow to adopt technology tools that can help streamline the whole drug development process. They have significant worries about security, interoperability between programs, and regulatory obstacles.
However, modern technology gives the world a chance to build and develop a cloud-based clinical trial with ease. Advanced technology has introduced different tools into several businesses, including the health and pharmaceutical industries. By using these tools, sponsors can bring new drugs to market faster—which translates into better treatment options for patients who need them. Here’s how clinical trial software improves drug development pace and eventual delivery:
-
Trial Design
The first step in the clinical trial process is trial design. The trial design helps in deciding how to test a drug or treatment. For a drug to be approved by the law and drug enforcement agency, it must undergo multiple phases of clinical trials. Each phase has its specific objectives and requirements.
Trial designers often have difficulty keeping up with all the necessary tasks to create a successful study plan, even though it sounds easy. This is why you can adopt clinical trial software to simplify the process for technicians, medical personnel, and every other person involved.
-
Predictive Analytics And Machine Learning
Predictive analytics and machine learning help with the trial design by analyzing the data from previous trials. This analysis allows researchers to develop hypotheses about how a new drug will perform in clinical trials. These technologies can also help execute these trials by providing tools like an interactive visual dashboard. This tool enables the monitoring of patients during real-time study activities. This technology reduces human error and increases efficiency while reducing costs associated with manual processes such as data entry.
Furthermore, you can use predictive analytics and machine learning for reporting. As the number of clinical trials increases, these can be used to generate daily reports. It’s much preferred instead of waiting for all the information to be collected from each participant. Also, it makes the compilation into a comprehensive report at the end of a study period more straightforward. This process is known as rolling reporting because it provides access to real-time information to everyone involved in research projects across multiple sites. Plus, it was being done through automated means without any manual input.
-
Cloud Infrastructure
Cloud infrastructure is a good option for clinical trials. You can implement your organization’s clinical trial management software with cloud infrastructure. Cloud infrastructure also supports predictive analytics and open-source software. Moreover, it provides electronic data capture (EDC) capabilities to enable efficient collection and analysis of patient data during a trial.
-
Clinical Trial Management Software Keeps Your Data Secure
Data security is one of the essential aspects of clinical trials. That’s why secure data-sharing technology is a crucial component of clinical trial software. Clinical trial management software will ensure that all information, from drug testing results to patient medical records, remains secure during every stage of development. It eases reporting and monitoring processes to make informed decisions about a clinical trial program.
-
Electronic Data Capture (EDC)
Electronic Data Capture (EDC) is software that automates data collection from sites. It’s not just used to collect data from patients but also site staff and sponsors. EDC software is highly configurable and can be customized for each trial. This flexibility allows you to choose which fields are essential to capture and where they go in your database system. Your EDC solution should handle these changes easily without impacting other parts of your process or slowing down your team’s workflow.
-
Investigator Site Portal (ISP)
To fulfill the stringent requirements of clinical trials, you need a system that can provide investigators with access to their data and tools. This is what a clinical trial software investigator site portal (ISP) does. The ISP is a web-based portal that provides investigators access to the data and tools to run their study and manage their trial documents, communications, and more.
Conclusion
There is a lot of potential to improve clinical trials using the right tools and technologies. While it’s unlikely that you will adopt all of these tools simultaneously as there are various contenders, having different options for your organization makes it easy to try out new ones and see what works best. The above are just a few advanced technologies available today and how they can help your clinical trial processes.
