Verana Health steps into clinical trial site selection with launch of real-world evidence tool VeraSite

VeraSite can help clinical trial sponsors and contract research organizations streamline ophthalmology clinical trials using real-world patient data to identify potential clinical trial sites. 

On June 22, 2023, digital health company Verana Health announced the launch of the VeraSite tool for clinical trial site selection. Through the subscription-based platform, clinical trial sponsors and contract research organizations (CROs) can access real-world data on ophthalmology patient populations to match investigators and trial sites with upcoming clinical trials. With a recent study showing a large number of trials failing to meet enrollment deadlines, VeraSite helps streamline the clinical trial process by providing a secure way to quickly identify trial sites and potential patient populations matched to unique study protocols. 

Andrea Sim, Verana Health’s Chief Product Officer said, “With VeraSite, we’ve created a real-world evidence-driven solution to that challenge, allowing sponsors and CROs to optimize site selection based on a complete view of the entire patient landscape. This is an enormous step forward in improving efficiency and diversity in ophthalmology clinical trials, and it opens up tremendous new opportunities for clinicians and patients to become more involved in clinical trials.” 

VeraSite leverages de-identified real-world electronic health record (EHR) data from the IRIS^® registry (Intelligent Research in Sight), developed through Verana’s partnership with the American Academy of Ophthalmology. This registry captures de-identified longitudinal patient data collected from >15,000 contributing clinicians. The data curation and analytics partner for the IRIS Registry, Verana, extracts and organizes structured data and unstructured data from this expansive dataset using natural language processing and advanced machine learning to provide a detailed view of the entire ophthalmology patient population.  

With VeraSite, trial sponsors and CROs can use the tool to identify different patient populations according to diagnoses, treatment patterns, visual acuity results, intraocular pressure, and demographics. Users can then learn where these patients are treated, and additional site-level information, such as trial experience, subspecialties, and clinical areas of interest, can be gleaned from the tool. This real-world information can be used to match investigators to upcoming clinical trials and allow researchers to gauge their interest in participating in or referring patients to the trial.