Digital Transformation Could Improve Clinical Trial Process

Healthcare professionals believe digital technology could considerably improve the pre-clinical and clinical trial process.

More than one-third (35 percent) of professionals worldwide surveyed by Globaldata are confident that technologies like artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, application programming interfaces (API) and digital platforms would improve pre-clinical and clinical trials. Drug and medical device developers that have been reluctant to embrace virtual trials will have no option but to rapidly invest in this technology if they want to stay competitive, Globaldata warns.

“While the digitalization of clinical trials had been well underway prior to COVID-19, the pandemic has accelerated this trend,” said Elton Kwok, associate research manager in Pharma at GlobalData. “These new technologies are helping reduce time, labor, costs, and other associated risk factors. Healthcare professionals are seeing the benefits of digital transformation in everything from patient selection and enrollment, to target identification, drug approval, data collection and analysis, supply chain management, marketing and sales.”
 
Thirty-nine percent of North American healthcare and pharma professionals positively viewed pre-clinical and clinical trial digitization. Thirty-nine percent of these professionals in Europe had the same outlook, while 28 percent of health professionals in Asia-Pacific embraced virtual trials. The results were not much different than those in 2019 and 2020 surveys.
 
“Emerging technologies such as AI, Big Data, APIs, and digital platforms are expected to improve patient selection, enhance data collection, integration and analysis, while at the same time reduce time, labour, and associated risks,” said Kwok. “Over 130 respondents to a survey by GlobalData*, believe that eventually total cost would be lowered. Their businesses would stay competitive in the market and business continuity could be maintained.”
 
Globaldata conducted the survey last fall in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.