Topography Health: Charting The Future Of Clinical Trial Participation
Public awareness of clinical trial shortcomings has seen a recent surge, with concerns around access, diversity and cost of trial participation leading to the status quo coming under the microscope. Clinical trials are a critical part of scientific discovery and drug development — getting life-saving treatments from inception to the hands of everyday people.
So how can we fix what’s broken? This is the problem Topography Health’s founders — Alexander Saint-Amand, Andrew Kirchner and Mac Parish — are making strides to solve.
As is true in medicine, the first step is diagnosing the problem. Almost all doctors are trained as clinical investigators in medical school, but only an estimated 2% continue to do research after graduation. Most clinical trial sites are concentrated around large academic health systems and as a result, fail to access the demographic and geographic diversity that is necessary in achieving the optimal clinical efficacy and safety.
We believe the remedy is empowering all physicians to engage in clinical trials that can help address the needs of their community, by removing the traditional hurdles to participation. This is why we’re excited to lead a $21.5 million investment in Topography Health, a full-stack clinical trial platform for community physicians.
Topography is building a broad, highly-engaged network of physicians to engage in clinical trial research and expand access to historically under-addressed patient populations.
Topography is addressing the shortcomings of today’s clinical trial landscape by creating a national network of community physicians, equipped to execute on trials within their own practices and environments.
The benefits of Topography’s model are three-fold: providers can offer improved treatment options to patients and increase practice revenues, clinical trial sponsors (typically pharmaceutical companies) can improve trial enrollment and diversity, and patients can access treatment options historically not available or accessible without the proper financing.
It’s a solution that benefits all stakeholders, and enriches the potential of drug development and trial outcomes.
Topography lifts the burden from the provider and unlocks expanded trial participation.
For community providers, trial participation requires significant time dedicated to administrative and business management — a luxury inaccessible for most private practices. Topography goes beyond point solutions, offering the full stack of trial participation resources ranging from digital workflow technology to research staff.
The model ensures not only that the burden of clinical trial execution is alleviated for participating providers, but also that practices are functioning as high-quality trial sites able to contribute to robust clinical research.
Topography’s best-in-class team and differentiated market access are a winning combination.
Identifying and recruiting highly-engaged community physicians to participate in research is a critical component of the success of both Topography Health and the broader industry. That’s why we are thrilled to back Topography’s management team, who have the industry experience and nuanced understanding of what’s required to make a physician truly successful at clinical trial execution.
Alexander’s twenty years leading global expert insights firm Gerson Lehrman Group, where he developed the world’s largest network of 170,000 physicians, serves as the foundation for Topography’s community physician focus and unparalleled market access. The Topography team is committed to creating a solution that meaningfully engages physicians and patients, addressing the root cause of historical barriers to clinical trial participation.
We are excited to partner with Alexander, Andrew, Mac and the entire Topography team in unlocking the full potential of the clinical trial process.
