A new mobile technology platform enables pharmaceutical companies to do remote monitoring of patients participating in clinical trials or drug studies, according to an article in MedCity News.

Developed by Science37, a company founded by a group of scientists, the new mHealth platform works like a communication device and an EHR.

“It’s a totally new type of operating model,” said the company's co-founder and CEO Noah Craft. “We use a nice, easy interface that allows patients access from home and they can reach the principal investigator. From the patient perspective, the technology has to be built around the latest design principles, but also around security and authentication [concerns].”

The innovative technology, Craft noted, is involved in real trials with real drugs. For example, its metasite is supporting a rare disease drug for a big pharma company in a Phase 3 clinical trial.

The platform is focused on these key treatment areas: precision medicine for oncology, neuroscience, rare disease, and autoimmune disease. Craft explained its decision to go down this route instead of a more obvious one like, say, diabetes, because it wanted to improve patient access to clinical trials in these areas. He declined to elaborate on who it is working with or even how many companies.

Only recently Science37, so named because 37C is the normal temperature of the human body, raised new money from dRx Capital ($6.5 million) and Lux Capital ($350 million) to advance its mHealth solution. Its collaborators include national mobile nursing companies, pharmacy chains, patient advocacy groups and technology businesses. The company also uses telemedicine tools developed in-house.

Craft said the fact that Science37 is run by people with clinical trial experience has helped towards de-risking it for pharma companies and investors. Previously, Craft was chief medical officer of VisualDx and the chief scientific Officer for Direct Dermatology, a teledermatology company. He has also worked as director of the Centre for Immunotherapy Research at LABioMed.

Clinical trial recruitment has proved to be a major challenge for pharma companies and is viewed as one of the costliest aspects of drug development. Adam Goulburn of Lux Capital said it wanted to invest in the business partly because it falls into clinical trial development and management — an area he said is beyond broad investor interest.

Source: MedCity News
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

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healthmanagement, mobile technology, clinical trials, pharmaceutical companies, remote monitoring, EHR A new mobile technology platform enables pharmaceutical companies to do remote monitoring of patients participating in clinical trials or drug studies, according to an article in MedCity News. The new mHealth platform works like a communication device and