Real-world industry round-up: integrated research platform launched to help aid understanding of COVID-19 impacts, outcomes and potential treatments
This month: Kantar (London, UK) launches an online medical platform to help support oncologists during COVID-19, TriNetX (MA, USA) and Techtrials (Sao Paulo, Brazil) partner to make Brazil’s largest real-world dataset available on the TriNetX Network and more!
In this latest installment of our regular monthly column, we summarize a selection of key real-world evidence industry developments that have taken place over the past month.
The news highlights:
Integrated research platform launched to help aid understanding of COVID-19 impacts, outcomes and potential treatments
Partnership sees Brazil’s largest real-world dataset become available on the TriNetX Network
Online medical platform launched to help support oncologists during COVID-19
FDA research collaboration to use real-world data to help study COVID-19
Integrated research platform launched to help aid understanding of COVID-19 impacts, outcomes and potential treatments
Parexel® (MA, USA) has announced the launch of its new, patient-centric, integrated research platform – powered by Microsoft Azure – to collate and analyze critical real-world data on COVID-19 impacts, disease trajectory, patient outcomes and potential treatments. The real-world evidence platform, #KeepingPatientsFirst, will utilize machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyze gathered data and predict disease progression and outcomes, which could help support effective treatment decisions. It is also hoped that by enabling physicians with rapid access to pooled, real-time analyses on multiple therapies in use for COVID-19, this could help identify promising treatments for the disease faster.
Jamie Macdonald, CEO at Parexel, commented: “Applying the traditional process of executing randomized controlled clinical trials that require in-person subject availability over a period of months and years to execute is simply not feasible in today’s landscape. As such, our industry must innovate to validate and approve these therapies at the earliest possible moment. Our #KeepingPatientsFirst platform leverages advanced technology capabilities along with industry-leading expertise to expedite the processing and analysis of information to work with regulators to save lives.”
Partnership sees Brazil’s largest real-world dataset become available on the TriNetX Network
TriNetX (MA, USA) and Techtrials (São Paulo, Brazil) have announced their partnership that will see Brazil’s largest, integrated real-world dataset become available on TriNetX’s network. The real-world data in Techtrials’ dataset represent approximately 90% of the Brazilian population and will complement existing data from leading healthcare organizations in Brazil, already part of the network, to help drive clinical research and region-specific clinical trials.
Douglas Andreas Valverde, President and CEO at Techtrials, explained: “Combining the state-of-the-art TriNetX platform with Techtrials [real-world data] provides an important resource for clinical trial studies. We are excited to be partnering with TriNetX to help bring an increased number of research projects to Brazil.”
Online medical platform launched to help support oncologists during COVID-19
Kantar (London, UK) has launched an online medical platform – the Kantar Oncology Platform – to help support oncologists across France, Germany, Italy, Spain the UK and the USA during COVID-19 by providing anonymized and aggregated data tracking changes, delays and modifications to cancer treatment decisions during the pandemic.
Julien Goretti (Kantar) stated: “We created this platform after hearing concerns from oncologists and related specialists that they lack sufficient data to make informed decisions during the current medical crisis. More than 300 physicians have already connected to the platform and gained access to aggregated data for nearly 1,000 patients. The response from physicians has been significant in hard-hit countries, such as Italy and Spain. We look forward to providing continued support to the oncology community during this crisis.”
Industry collaboration to provide researchers access to large all-payer database
Boston Health Economics (BHE; MA, USA) and Premier (NC, USA) have announced their collaboration that will see the all-payer Premier Healthcare Database – which includes recent data on COVID-19 – become available to researchers and data scientists through BHE’s Instant Health Data platform. It is hoped this will help streamline data analytics and more rapidly determine potential strategies that could improve patient care.
Joseph Menzin, Founder and CEO of BHE, commented: “As we continue to navigate the ongoing pandemic, the ability to access up-to-date real-world data and efficiently conduct robust analysis is more important than ever. Speeding the development and dissemination of impactful research is vital for the U.S. response to COVID-19, as it can help governments, healthcare providers and communities respond to patient needs and provide high-quality care.”
FDA research collaboration to use real-world data to help study COVID-19
Aetion (NY, USA) has announced it has signed a research collaboration agreement with the US FDA to analyze real-world data and generate real-world evidence to help advance understanding of COVID-19, its natural history and potential treatment approaches, which supports the FDA’s objectives to employ novel data sources to study COVID-19.
Amy Abernethy, Principal Deputy Commissioner of Food and Drugs at the FDA, commented: “The FDA is approaching the generation of real-world evidence for COVID-19 with a sense of urgency to learn what we can, as soon as we can, from patients who are receiving care right now.”
