23andMe, a frontrunner in the consumer genomics space, is turning its attention to clinical trial recruitment. The company has inked a deal with TrialSpark, a health tech platform that lets providers become clinical trial sites, connecting their customers to the latter’s trial network.
The new deal will use 23andMe’s crowdsourced research platform, which lets its customers opt into research and supply their non-genetic information. The consumer genomics company is then able to identify and contact patients likely to be appropriate for specific clinical trials.
“23andMe’s unique model solves for the biggest challenge in clinical trials — patient recruitment,” Emily Drabant Conley, VP of business development at 23andMe, said in a statement. “It’s game changing, because it is built around engaged customers who consent to participate in research, and it allows 23andMe to quickly find the right patients with the right conditions for clinical trials. Now with TrialSpark we are taking this one step further by enabling our customers access to clinical trial sites within their community.”
As part of today’s news the companies are putting out a request for clinical trial proposals in the areas of dermatology, gastroenterology, pulmonology, endocrinology, ophthalmology, inflammatory diseases, neurology, women’s health and rare diseases.
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WHY IT MATTERS
Clinical trials can be both costly and time consuming. One of the initial problems is matching the right participants to the right study. A Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development article found that two-thirds of clinical trial sites don’t meet the enrollment requirement for individual trials. However, the pharma world has been increasingly turning to digital health companies to help fill in the gaps.
“With the convergences of life sciences and digital health, we are already seeing outstanding opportunities to transform patient care and drug discoveries,” Kendalle Burlin O’Connell, COO at MassBio, told MobiHealthNews during a July interview. “We knew that integrating digital into the life sciences was happening, and we knew that there were other industries that were doing it [and] doing it better. So, if we wanted to stay on top, we needed to take a strategic look at what needs to be done.”
Date: September 30, 2019
Source: Mobihealth News