Healthcare Club Newsletter Week of 4/19 - Clinical Trials: Big Business and Rapid Change

Welcome!

This week we’ll talk about clinical trials and how technology is driving rapid change in this market expected to reach over $65 Billion by 2025. (Click the embedded links to follow along.)

Clinical trials are big business. It takes an average of 10 years before a drug is approved and can cost over $1 Billion from Phase 1 through post-market surveillance.

With over 300,000 trials registered globally, their numbers and complexity are growing every year. However, the failure rate is particularly high. For example, only 1 in 10 cancer drugs make it to FDA approval. There are not many other industries with a 90% product failure rate. Even with accelerated approvals, many treatments just don’t measure up. There is even a growing debate about whether large trials are still necessary in the coming era of personalized medicine and data mining.

So what can be done, and who is making moves in the industry?

One challenge is finding people to participate in trials. Industry is stepping up in big ways with artificial intelligence and machine learning leading the charge. Digital-health companies such as Antidote, Deep6 AI, and Watson IBM are empowering both doctors and patients to access novel trials themselves. They may also help decrease the disparity in who we base medical decisions on: currently over 80% of clinical trial participants are white. This racial disparity has large implications , especially for diseases that affect marginalized racial and ethnic groups.

Another sector that industry is changing things is in remote patient monitoring. Instead of coming into a hospital, patients can be monitored at home. Companies such as Pillsy and Medminder help with pill reminders, dose tracking, immediate data collection, and remote caregiver support. Telemedecine technologies, from webcams to medical-grade wearable sensors are coming quickly online, making site-less clinical research a more and more likely possibility. Even virtual reality has been predicted to become a large disrupter in patient monitoring and experience.

So where do you fit in? Right now there is a problem with patients withdrawing from clinical trials after they have given their consent. The reasons are varied, and there are plenty of opportunities to help the healthcare industry solve some of its most important problems.

We hope you enjoyed this week’s letter! As always, let us know what topic you’re interested in and reach out to the Healthcare Club with any questions.