In a recent Frost & Sullivan webcast, its Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology practice Senior Industry Analyst Barath Shankar presented on his study “Contract Research & Manufacturing Services, Trends in Deal Making.” One top industry challenge Shankar named was the “Increasing Divide between Patient Access and Studies Threatens Productivity.” Shankar gave that challenge an impact level of high for the short-term one-to-two years, a high for the three-to-four year outlook, and a medium for the five-to-seven year outlook.
I followed up with Shankar to find out what is going to make this challenge go from high to medium in the one-to-seven year time frame. Via email, Shankar explained: “CROs and patient recruitment firms will continue to work closer than ever before to try to mitigate the risk in the short term. We are likely to see more partnerships and possibly even acquisitions to further integrate this aspect into the business of CROs. Also, globalization of trials increases access to patients from other emerging markets, as well as paving the way for increased harmonization of trial data that would help CROs with global capabilities in the long term.”
We have yet to see any acquisitions of companies in this space. But both CROs and sponsors do utilize patient-subject recruitment organizations’ services. Both CROs and sponsors also utilize software to help model, mine, predict, and analyze data to get patient enrollment forecasts accurate and the studies themselves on-track. Sometimes it’s part of a CTMS package, and sometimes its part of a the CRO or recruitment company’s services, and other times the software comes solely from a technology company, and can be incorporated as a Software as a Service (SaaS).
Go here for an example of the latter to register and listen for free a webcast that DecisionView presented last week on predictive analytics to optimize patient enrollment. The end part of the discussion highlighted the company’s StudyOptimizer product, and audience members were quite interested on how the product incorporated data, used the data, and integrated with others systems.
The Divide Between Patients and Trials
In a recent Frost & Sullivan webcast, its Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology practice Senior Industry Analyst Barath Shankar presented on his study “Contract Research & Manufacturing Services, Trends in Deal Making.” One top industry challenge Shankar named was the “Increasing Divide between Patient Access and Studies Threatens Productivity.” Shankar gave that challenge an impact level of high for the short-term one-to-two years, a high for the three-to-four year outlook, and a medium for the five-to-seven year outlook.
I followed up with Shankar to find out what is going to make this challenge go from high to medium in the one-to-seven year time frame. Via email, Shankar explained: “CROs and patient recruitment firms will continue to work closer than ever before to try to mitigate the risk in the short term. We are likely to see more partnerships and possibly even acquisitions to further integrate this aspect into the business of CROs. Also, globalization of trials increases access to patients from other emerging markets, as well as paving the way for increased harmonization of trial data that would help CROs with global capabilities in the long term.”
We have yet to see any acquisitions of companies in this space. But both CROs and sponsors do utilize patient-subject recruitment organizations’ services. Both CROs and sponsors also utilize software to help model, mine, predict, and analyze data to get patient enrollment forecasts accurate and the studies themselves on-track. Sometimes it’s part of a CTMS package, and sometimes its part of a the CRO or recruitment company’s services, and other times the software comes solely from a technology company, and can be incorporated as a Software as a Service (SaaS).
Go here for an example of the latter to register and listen for free a webcast that DecisionView presented last week on predictive analytics to optimize patient enrollment. The end part of the discussion highlighted the company’s StudyOptimizer product, and audience members were quite interested on how the product incorporated data, used the data, and integrated with others systems.