HealingWell
Search Close Search
☰

Interesting article RE clinical trials

Support Forums
>
Prostate Cancer
✚ New Topic ✚ Reply
❬ ❬ Previous Thread |Next Thread ❭ ❭
Posted 12/23/2018 8:17 AM (GMT -5)
In the January (print) edition of Scientific American, there is an article about getting people who aren't near a major center into clinical trials. Since a large percentage of the US population (and the bulk of the actual land area of the country) is served by "community hospitals"--which are frequently not affiliated with major centers such as MD Anderson--the patients there who might benefit from trials don't even know about them, much less have access, don't get the treatments they need.

The article discusses how this can be changed, relatively easily even.

I would post a link, but it's subscription only.

This is particularly of interest for me, because of my experience with PC, and where I lived at the time. It's all well and good to point out that "the majority of the US population lives within 200 miles of a major research hospital or NCCN center of excellence"--but that doesn't help the person who is actually "that guy", for whom 200 miles might a well be the far side of the moon. It's much more important for the doctors and caregivers at the 50 bed community hospital to be able to connect their patient with the research network--and treat them at home.
Posted 12/23/2018 10:30 AM (GMT -5)
Halbert -

If I may, could I mention and link to an article I saw not long ago that also addresses this issue?

From the article:

"Wearable technology, in particular, has been of great use as a source of automated patient monitoring. Things like wearable heart monitors can continually report the patient’s health status to the researchers automatically, making the process of gathering data seamless for both patient and researchers."

And in particular:

"One such advancement that will be worth keeping an eye on is virtual sites. Someday, it may be commonplace to conduct clinical trials completely remotely without requiring patients to be physically present. This is possible through the use of web and mobile apps to report feedback as well as wearable devices to monitor patients and automated medication systems to administer the required dose of medication when it is required."

"Most recently, Novartis and Science 37 have teamed up to conduct many more virtual trials over the next three years. They hope that through virtual trials they will be able to make clinical trials more accessible and help include demographics that normally wouldn’t participate."

"It is possible that, someday, all clinical trials will be conducted virtually with most of the process being automated. If that’s the case, then clinical trials will most likely see a large rise in people wishing to participate in them as they will be able to do so from the comfort of their own home. Having more people enrolling in clinical trials will also make each study more productive as less time will be spent on searching for patients, and it will also increase the variety of demographics that will take part."

https://www.biospace.com/article/technology-is-revolutionizing-clinical-trials-here-s-how/
✚ New Topic ✚ Reply