We often get questions around COVID-19. How has the pandemic impacted your business? How did the pandemic change the clinical trial landscape? Has the clinical trial industry experienced a similar push to digitalisation like we’ve seen with video meetings? In this article, we’ll answer all of these questions and more.
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Summary
- The digitalization of the clinical trial industry has been accelerated as a result of lockdowns and restrictions.
- Clinical trials are becoming more ‘decentralized’ as patients are able to participate from their own home using mobile technologies.
- The new digital and decentralized operating model brings new privacy, integration, and regulatory challenges
- Triall addresses these challenges by using blockchain to promote data integrity, auditability, and system integration.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exemplified the value of clinical trials to society. Clinical trials are a crucial part of the development of new medicines as they evaluate the safety and efficacy of new vaccines and therapeutics before these enter the market. This process typically takes 10 years and requires the collaboration of many different stakeholders such as pharma companies, hospitals, patients, and various specialized service providers. The data collected in these clinical trials utlimately allows market regulators such as the FDA to assess whether a new medicine can be introduced on the market.
At the start of the pandemic, many clinical trials were temporarily put on hold as hospitals were overwhelmed by the influx of COVID-19 patients. Fortunately, the clinical trial industry proved to be very versatile, quickly adjusting to this new operating environment, and within no-time many clinical trial projects were back on track.
In the next sections, we’ll explain how the pandemic has left a lasting impact on our industry and how we as a company navigated through this crisis. Lastly, we will also take a peak into the future. Keep on reading for more.
The impact on our industry
Where paper files (hard-copies) used to be the industry standard for decades, the clinical trial industry has been digitalizing at a rapid pace over the past 5-10 years. The pandemic has greatly accelerated this trend as many clinical trial professionals were forced to work remotely and digitize key trial procedures. Clinical trials are increasingly adopting mobile technologies for collecting data and are becoming more ‘decentralized’ as a result. While the traditional centralized clinical trial model weighs heavy on patients traveling to sites, the decentralized (also ‘virtual’) trial model leverages mobile technologies to enable patients to participate from their own home.
The decentralization of clinical research, however, also poses new privacy, integration, and regulatory challenges as stakeholders struggle to find solutions that can prove that sending and receiving parties are who they say they are, and that data is not (un)intentionally manipulated in transit.
The impact on our business
The pandemic came as a shock to many businesses and industries around the globe. Fortunately, the lockdowns and restrictions have not hampered our team’s productivity (apart from missing the social aspects of meeting face-to-face). To illustrate, we have been able to continue our product development as usual, as most of our product and development team’s touchpoints were already digital. The same goes for team meetings and marketing, which can all be conducted digitally. Lastly, when it comes to sales, discovery calls and product demos can easily be done through video communication tools and, essentially, the entire sales cycle can be digitalized.
Where do we go from here?
While the extremely fast COVID-19 vaccine trials were the result of exceptional development efforts, capital allocation, prior research, and global alignment, they did demonstrate that there are clear opportunities for improving the speed and rigor of clinical trials. These opportunities may also be seized outside of epidemic emergencies of global attention, as long as these do not compromise patient safety and scientific integrity.
“While the extremely fast COVID-19 vaccine trials were the result of exceptional development efforts, capital allocation, prior research, and global alignment, they did demonstrate that there are clear opportunities for improving the speed and rigor of clinical trials.”
To achieve this, data and documentation will have to be recorded and timestamped with a high level of precision and tamper-resistance. Moreover, data fragmentation needs to be tackled using novel approaches to boost interoperability.
The role of Triall
At Triall, we respond directly to this need by leveraging blockchain to promote the integrity and auditability of clinical trials as well as tackle data fragmentation by enabling secure data exchange between stakeholders and their systems. Together with our partners, advisors, and growing community, we’re developing the world’s first blockchain-enabled digital ecosystem for clinical trials. Underpinning this ecosystem is our main utility token $TRL which provides access to all Triall solutions while also enabling P2P compensation, governance, and community engagement (e.g. staking, memberships, grants, etc.). All of this is geared towards our mission: accelerating the introduction of new vaccines and therapeutics into society to ensuring that society’s emerging medical needs can continue to be met.
Are you supporting us in our mission to accelerate the introduction of new medicines into society? Join our #blockchainforhealth iniative by participating in the $TRL token pre-sale at triall.io 👈
