Patient-Centricity Starts with Clinical Studies that Reflect the Population
Author:
Verana Health
The notion of person-centered care is a promising aspiration. This approach shifts focus from provider to patient, prioritizing the patient’s needs, preferences, and experience at every stage of the healthcare journey.
Achieving true patient-centricity, however, is reliant on clinical studies that reflect diverse populations and deliver treatments that doctors can prescribe for patients with confidence.
The Importance of Patient Diversity
Diseases and medicines can affect people differently. Pharmacogenetic research in recent decades has identified significant differences among racial and ethnic groups in the metabolism, clinical effectiveness, and side-effect profiles of many clinically important drugs.
When subpopulations are underrepresented in clinical trials for new treatments, particularly for diseases such as diabetic retinopathy that disproportionately affect them, the oversight exacerbates health issues and ultimately drives up the nation’s health care costs.
When clinical studies include diverse demographics, such as age, gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, they provide a more accurate understanding of how treatments and interventions affect different groups. Representative studies allow researchers to:
- Identify variations in treatment responses: Different groups may respond differently to the same treatment due to genetic, environmental, or lifestyle factors.
- Uncover potential side effects: Some side effects may be more prevalent or severe in certain populations.
- Develop targeted therapies: Understanding how different groups are affected can lead to the development of more personalized and effective treatments.
Representative clinical studies ensure that research outcomes are applicable and beneficial to a broad range of patients. To that end, recent FDA guidance aims to improve research inclusivity and clinical findings by ensuring diverse participant representation.
This effort supports the goal of developing personalized care plans, reducing health disparities, and improving overall healthcare quality.
Using Real-World Data to Build Representative Studies
Achieving patient-centricity in clinical trials is no small feat. But an essential step to achieving appropriate diversity in studies starts with deliberate recruitment and site optimization strategies.
Forward-looking study sponsors and contract research organizations (CROs) are proactive in planning how to recruit more representative patient populations. And a key to achieving better patient recruitment and site selection is unlocking insights from massive volumes of unstructured healthcare data.
Electronic health records (EHR) contain a trove of valuable medical information hidden in clinical notes, radiology reports, and images. It’s information that isn’t easily searchable, but with a rigorous, collaborative approach, multidisciplinary teams of medical and information scientists using AI are able to glean important clues from this de-identified real-world data (RWD).
Leveraging RWD about clinical characteristics, disease states, and other factors, researchers can make timely and accurate assessments of eligible patient populations that are most likely to benefit from treatments, as well as assessments of patients most likely to drop.
In this way, AI-curated sets of RWD are a critical tool to make significant progress in the challenge of building representative studies.
An Important Step Forward
Patient-centricity is not just a buzzword, but a fundamental principle that should guide all aspects of healthcare. Representative clinical studies are essential to achieving this goal, as they provide the data and insights needed to deliver personalized, equitable, and effective care to all patients.
As a leader in RWD-driven clinical research, Verana Health has extensive experience in helping organizations optimize their studies and make fundamental steps towards creating healthcare that truly puts patients first.
To learn more about applying AI technology and RWD to improve recruitment strategies, schedule a meeting with us.
Let's Accelerate Research Together
To learn more about Verana Health, please fill out the information below and our team will follow up with you as soon as possible.