Certainly, none of us will ever forget the year we just survived.
2020 brought challenges most of us never would have expected. But
challenging times demand sharp focus and open minds, which leads to
innovation and advancement.
In the clinical trials space, we saw this firsthand as sponsors
looked to technology more than ever to keep their businesses moving
despite the obstacles imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. We saw a
tremendous increase in the use of remote technologies ranging from
virtual patient visits to patient engagement and monitoring. While our
industry can sometimes be slow to adopt new approaches, the necessity to
do business during the pandemic opened minds, and the technologies
themselves opened eyes, proving their worth in enabling study execution
and delivering quality research data. With many technologies and
tech-driven approaches now proven, the industry is hungry to see what’s
next.
Following are some of the areas where, in 2021 and the years to
follow, I think will produce new and game-changing innovations, helping
to optimize what can be accomplished through clinical research
Artificial Intelligence
AI, and the solutions it enables will continue to impact how we
execute clinical studies. As we get more comfortable with AI and machine
learning, we’ll find new way to implement it in every phase of clinical
research. Already it’s in play helping to optimize patient cohorts
through predictive analytics related to things like dosing behaviors.
We’ve begun using it to help detect improvements in patient
symptomatology that are almost impossible to identify accurately and
reliably with the human eye. In this way, it’s also working to reduce
observer bias. Just recently, it was reported
that Google’s DeepMind project is now able to determine the shape of a
protein in three dimensions by analyzing its amino-acid sequence. This
is a significant leap for artificial intelligence with near-limitless
promise for fighting disease and drug discovery.
The use of AI to enable increasingly sophisticated data mining
programs will grow in importance. Data mining works to find patterns and
relationships in data by combing through vast amounts of information.
In clinical research, this often means utilizing AI algorithms to dive
into years’ worth of literature and patient outcome data to identify
therapeutic needs, but also potential solutions to problems that were
previously thought unsolvable. Finding patterns in the data can allow
researchers to make accurate predictions for how a new drug might work
and on which kinds of patients. The industry has been using data mining
tools for many years, but evolving approaches and AI-driven solutions
will result in faster and more comprehensive discoveries.
Growth in Cloud Computing
While the transition to cloud computing in the industry has been
going on for some time, COVID-19 has accelerated things due to the need
for multiple stakeholders to access data securely from any location.
This necessity has had the added benefit of convincing the majority of
the industry that serverless computing is a secure option that can help
save a great deal of cost and that allowing users to access data in near
real-time from the device of their choosing can speed up clinical
research. This, I believe, will drive tremendous growth in cloud
computing in the next few years.
Aside from direct benefits to current clinical studies, serverless
computing enables companies to build more agile applications so they can
innovate and respond to change faster. The technologies scale
automatically from zero-to-peak demands and eliminate operational
overhead such as server provisioning and management. While the
pay-for-use billing model is still being perfected, as it is optimized,
it will help companies manage costs better. All these benefits combine
to help companies focus on building better applications and tools and
growing new and innovative competencies.
5G
This year promises to be the year when the world truly begins to take advantage of 5G technology. The speed at which we’ll be able to communicate will enable data of all kinds to be shared more quickly and the technology itself is becoming more affordable. In clinical research, the power to monitor and communicate with patients in real-time, enabled by lightning-fast data transfer, will help sponsors make better, faster decisions on things like patient selection, adverse event identification, medication adherence issues and more. In addition to higher speeds, 5G enables low latency, massive scaling in machine-to-machine connections and network slicing capabilities that will allow the full potential of the internet of things (IoT) to be realized. Edge computing devices and sensors deployed at a massive scale will enable study teams to collect patient data in ways never possible before. 5G promises a path for study teams to engage with patients immediately when needed, helping to solve problems before they can result in data loss.
Remote Technologies Will Power an Increasing Number of Studies
Over the course of 2020, more and more sponsors and study teams saw
the power of remote patient engagement and monitoring technologies. Not
only were these technologies working to keep studies going and get new
studies off the ground during a pandemic that was keeping many patients
away from clinics, but they were also helping to produce better, more
accurate data. No longer did study teams have to rely exclusively on
data gathered during in-person visits; they now could have a continuous
stream of patient data coming in via remote solutions.
Now that sponsors have seen the data possibilities made available through remote solutions, and site teams have seen that technology can keep them better informed while easing their patient-visit burden, there’s no going back to the old way of doing things. I expect 2021 to show how remote technologies can be a permanent feature of any study, complementing and streamlining the important work being done at trial sites and, in general, enabling smaller, faster trials while producing high-quality data.
For more information about AiCure and our AI-powered remote patient monitoring and engagement solutions, visit aicure.com
