Modernizing Clinical Trials: Digital Technologies and the Cloud
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Published by FiercePharma
compute environments to our PK scientists. Instead of
being able to run hundreds, they can now run thousands
of clinical trials to prepare these optimized design
runs," Russell Towell, a Senior Solutions Specialist at
Bristol-Myers Squibb, said.
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By using these cloud-
based trial simulations, they were able to reduce
the number of subjec ts by one-third, and reduce
the length of the study by almost a year.
Utilization of highly scalable, on- demand cloud -
based computation power for in silico clinical trial
simulations can help in the upfront optimization of
these trials, decreasing patient and trial site burden
and potentially speeding time to completion.
OPTIMIZING PATIENT AND TRIAL SITE
SELECTION WITH ADVANCED ANALYTICS
The average clinical development program takes
10 to 15 years to complete, in par t due to protocol
5 Bristol-Myers Squibb on AWS - Customer Success Stor y. (2013).
ht tps://w w w.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi96Wr x ASgo
complexity and patient recruitment and retention.
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The current process of protocol design involves a
labor-intensive process by which researchers use
benchmark studies and historical data to predict the
protocol feasibilit y based on its projec ted rate of
recruitment, which are of ten immediately outdated
given an ever-evolving competitive landscape.
To aid in these ef for ts, companies are looking to
ar tificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML)
to help expedite and optimize patient recruitment.
For example, Knowledgent has built an Intelligent
Trial Planning (ITP) application on the AWS Cloud that
uses AI/ML to predic t the feasibility of clinical trials
and forecast recruitment timelines. The ITP platform
enables study design teams at pharma organizations
to run predic tion analysis in minutes, not weeks,
6 How long a new drug takes to go through clinical trials.
Cancer Research UK (2014). Available at: ht tps://w w w.
cancerresearchuk.org/about- cancer/find-a- clinical-trial/how-
clinical-trials-are -planned-and- organised/how-long-it-takes-
for-a-new- drug-to - go -through- clinical-trials. (Accessed: 11th
December 2018)