How to improve healthcare and clinical research with digital data

Healthcare, despite its huge potential, lags behind other sectors in the use of its data. This is mainly due to the poor quality of data managed by healthcare institutions (>70% of patient data is still unstructured text in different languages) and to the lack of connection between healthcare institutions and research with no data access through a single platform.

Although data enhancement is at the core of the digital strategy of all major global life sciences companies, strict regulatory and compliance requirements, and the challenge to find a single, easy to use, global data management solutions are all factors impacting the speed of the digital transformation, especially in the clinical trials space.

Statistically, 86% of clinical trials are delayed due to inability to efficiently locate and recruit patients, as well as prevent them from dropping out from clinical trials. Patient drop-out rate of clinical studies is approximately 30%. The cost of recruiting one patient can range from 10k USD to 150k USD, depending on the rarity of the condition.

Life sciences companies and healthcare institutions are therefore increasingly looking for value adding partnerships with digital solutions providers able to overcome all the above-mentioned challenges.

Digital providers like Longenesis (www.longenesis.com) and their fully compliant global platform with anonymized patient information (metadata) for rapid access to multiple clinical sites, preserving “data stays local” principle, allowing up to 50% reduction in the clinical trials duration.

Their solution also covers the full patient journey management, from granular consent to RWD collection, leading to 30% reduction of in-hospital visits with 80% patient protocol adherence.

Medtronic for example leveraged the above-mentioned solution to enable a three week patient identification for a study, instead of traditional 6+ months in the diseases domain of diabetes.

Gedeon Richter developed with Longenesis an educational platform on contraception, empowering >8,000 women across Northern and Western Europe helping in late-stage diagnosis prevention in just two months (vs. standard 6 months).

There is a still a long road ahead but unlocking a healthier future by increasing the speed of medical research, all while being privacy and ethics-by-design at heart is the right means we are moving in the right direction.

By Paolo Malerba Life Sciences Executive, Head of Business Development & Strategy, Longenesis