Mankind is a click away from being in a clinical trial. Here’s How.

-Sashreek Ganguli, Amity University Kolkata

The questions raised on the efficiency of a clinical trial in this global pandemic are deeply concerning. Operational short-comings in the current clinical trial procedures relating to the identification, recruitment, data acquisition, etc. increase costs and stretches the already lengthy clinical trial, leading to minimized patient participation.

Here, the concept of digitizing clinical trials ushers a ray of hope. It is the technology to better data collection, recruitment and retention, and analytics using social media, digital biomarkers, and artificial intelligence. It promises a reduction in expenses and efforts using digital technologies, making it a patient-oriented trial experience. The recent proposal by the SWOG Cancer research network to incorporate a social media toolkit for novel clinical trials aims at raising awareness about these studies. This is an essential opportunity that will utilize the exponentially growing digital technology to accelerate the speed at which scientists generate evidence through clinical trials. This technology is still in its infancy as first world countries continue to empirically study the risks and benefits of the methods involved.

Source- Digitizing clinical trials, Inan, O.T., Tenaerts, P., Prindiville, S.A. et al.  (2020), npj Digital Medicine, 3:101,Page 1-5, DOI- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-020-0302-y