The Need for Clinical Trial Awareness

In a recent video interview with Applied Clinical Trials, Silvio Galea, chief data & analytics officer, WCG, discussed the challenges in the clinical trial industry, emphasizing low awareness among both patients and providers. He highlighted operational issues, including the difficulty in identifying and engaging patients, data interoperability, and ensuring data quality. Galea stressed the importance of user experience in electronic data capture tools and the need for industry standards. Prioritizing data collection should focus on safety, efficacy, and efficiency, ensuring data quality, and avoiding workflow disruptions.

A transcript of Galea’s conversation with ACT can be found below.

ACT: What are some challenges you are currently seeing in the industry around patient data?

Galea: Yeah, great question, Andy, and thanks for having me and WCG here today. Before talking about the challenges with patient data, we have to think about or look at the macro situation. If you look at the NIH, it's 5% or less of American adults who've never participated in a clinical trial, and not many more know about it. I was at a dads group the other day, and one of the fathers had shared that his mother-in-law had just come down with Parkinson's and we're talking about therapies and how to go about it. In the back of my head, it's like, okay, well, there probably has to be some sort of new trial out there that, if she is eligible, that this would be a great opportunity for her. It was six of us just talking and nobody brought that up as a channel of therapy. Not to say that trials can be therapy, but there is an opportunity there. I think first and foremost, it's awareness, and not just at the consumer side or the individual side, but also on the provider side. I don't know if this is correct, but I recall hearing something like 3-5% of providers who participate in clinical trials or act as a primary investigator, so when you do the math of number of people who know about it, who've participated, who are eligible, and then number of health institutions, PIs, who are out there open to do this work, the population is very small, and then you have to overcome the hurdle of even, making it viable. It's a big commitment on behalf of the individual to participate. There's a sacrifice that has to be done there, so how are we, as a society, aligned to provide that?