The Future of Clinical Trials: How Software is Changing the Game
Clinical trials are often used to determine the safety and efficacy of new drugs and treatments, but the process is evolving quickly.
With the help of software and technology, medical professionals can now manage the entire clinical trial process more efficiently. Much of this software is focused on streamlining traditionally manual processes that often take up a lot of time.
Analyzing trial data manually can often be a time-consuming and monotonous task. However, the software provides a much-needed solution by automating various processes, increasing efficiency and accuracy.
Additionally, these software solutions streamline data analysis and effectively manage the financial aspects of clinical trials. They provide trial sponsors with convenient features that simplify the overall management process.
Cloud-based systems are also helping the entire process, making data analysis and communication easier and faster. This helps keep everyone involved in the trial up to date and ensures the data is secure and accessible.
Using software in clinical trials can provide many advantages to healthcare professionals, patients, and research organizations. In this blog, let us explore some potential benefits of using software in clinical trials.
The Benefits of Software in Clinical Trials
The software has revolutionized how clinical trials are conducted, making the process more efficient, accurate, and cost-effective.
By automating various tasks and streamlining data collection and analysis, the software has significantly reduced the time and effort required to conduct clinical trials.
Increased Efficiency & Accuracy
The software offers a user-friendly interface and a variety of tools that simplify the trial process and promote collaboration among stakeholders. With all participants on the same page, working together becomes seamless.
Manual clinical data entry is prone to human error, which can be detrimental. However, the software’s advanced capabilities thoroughly examine each input and provide warnings for entries that deviate from the predefined parameters of the clinical study.
The software can effortlessly detect and rectify typographical errors thanks to its Artificial Intelligence technology and language processing features. By ensuring the accuracy of the data, the software significantly enhances the outcomes and success rates of clinical trials.
More Accessible Data
In randomized clinical trials, using pen and paper to collect patient data presented challenges for researchers in accessing and transporting the data. However, with the integration of cloud servers into clinical trial software, researchers now have seamless access to these data, saving time and effort.
Patients can conveniently track their treatment progress from their homes using electronic devices. This enhanced accessibility of data in clinical trials accelerates the study and analysis phase, facilitates better decision-making, and ultimately improves overall health outcomes.
Improved Patient Experiences
Patient satisfaction is the crucial cause behind successful enrolment & retention. It is ultimately necessary for clinicians to stay in touch with the patients.
Connecting all the patients at a time is practically impossible until clinical trial software platforms bring effortless solutions for clinicians & patients to schedule their online appointment at their convenience, which reduces time & cost burden.
Prioritizing patient values and providing timely reminders can also boost satisfaction in clinical trials.
Improved Quality of Results
A systematic approach to the entire research process through protocol amendments, safe data storage, and quick access to data for analysis & decision-making purposes, trial management software regulates & monitors the performance in real time.
Since the strategy is well-planned with proper execution through efficient eclinical software from the beginning, there will be an overall improvement in the trial process with a quality result.
Reduced Costs
Monitoring the trial process costs around 25 to 30% of the total research budget because of paying CRAs hourly or daily. Also, patient enrolment calls for more expenditure in concurrent clinical trials.
Decentralized clinical trial software aims to remove these barriers by providing remote monitoring, virtual patient engagement & centralized patient data storage to reuse whenever required.
How Software is Impacting Clinical Trials
Many successful clinical trials developed better drugs over the years to improve patient’s living quality. Generally, it took decades to develop a drug with a slow research process. But, after adopting the latest technologies, researchers find rapid growth in the overall research program. Let’s learn about the impact of technologies in clinical trials one by one:
Automation of Clinical Trials
As the global patient population is massive, dealing with them for clinical trials is equally challenging. Manual management of these patients isn’t accessible until you pick a clinical trial management software to handle it efficiently.
So, is picking software more than enough to bring success in clinical trials? Only when it controls every functionality from the set-up to completion automatically.
Streamlining Clinical Trial Processes
External factors like uncontrolled expenditures, patient care issues & compromise in patient data become a bottleneck in the clinical trial process.
Adopting a solution to safeguard the research objectives and minimize errors in the trial process can ease the movement of the clinical trial from beginning to end.
Technology plays a game with innovations like ePRO, eCOA, Schedule of Visits, EDC, etc., to bring smoothness in every trial stage.
Enhancing Data Management
Data validation is an integral part of clinical research as it determines the success or failure of a drug development program.
Checking the data quality is equally necessary to match the regulatory guidelines while performing clinical trials.
Also, there is a frequent change in the trial protocols, which impacts the parameters & eventually, data collection. It calls for recurring data management that is usable for study purposes.
Increasing Patient Engagement
The best practice to improve patient experience is to emphasize consistent communication & proper engagement during the treatment journey.
As Clinical trial software automates trial tasks, clinical staffs dedicate most of their time to enhancing patient care & ending with engagement on a good note with overall healthcare experience.
Accessibility of Clinical Trials
We all know limiting clinical trials to a specific boundary restricts us from getting behavioral studies of a particular patient group. As a result, the outcome could be a partial or complete failure in developing a full-proof therapy to fight diseases.
Hence, it is necessary to include every participant in the clinical trial & give them access to participate actively.
But how can technology impact accessibility? Software technologies with collaborative features give every research team member remote access to participate in the clinical trial.
Conclusion
In recent years, there has been exponential growth in the adoption of the latest innovations in encouraging clinical trials. Yet, there is a long way to go & in voicing the life science industry about the importance of a clinical trial software platform if they are willing to crack the social barriers and expand the clinical trial across the globe demographically.
