New Entrant Tackles Trial Motivation Drift

TRIAL360 advances networking platform to engage investigators and site staff post-launch

  In a relatively short period of time, many entrepreneurs have come to the clinical trials table, offering technology innovations that digitally transform manual processes; address gaps, or provide new possibilities, such as those described in this Patient Matching

article

, or “all of the above.”   Last

week

, yet another entrant to the clinical trials space joined--Egg’s TRIAL360, a digital platform that was developed to “encompass all aspects of trial design and execution,” which to be sure is a lofty goal.

Applied Clinical Trials

spoke to Chris Knight, Egg Innovation Director at Virgo Health and visionary behind TRIAL360, to get more insight. And insightful it was. The platform is a way to extend the initial in-person investigator meeting and keep trial investigators engaged and committed, while not losing the excitement and energy that happens when a study launches.   Knight’s path to TRIAL360 was not direct. He says he went from pharma (not trials), to healthcare, to technology, where he subsequently uncovered negative issues related to study communication and collaboration-specifically at the investigator/site level. Those observations came from his work with Virgo Health, where the award-winning iteration for TRIAL360 was formed. “We were able to see the impact that the original investigator training portal had-3,000 professionals from 32 countries completing 6,500 individual training modules.” Knight refined the elements, expanded the flexibility and increased the networking potential to give investigators and trial-related stakeholders a more modern replication of current cultural social experience, among the training, resources and milestone capabilities in the platform.   So like similar internally-developed dashboards and portals, study sites can see study benchmarks and how they are performing against others, access documents and provide under-the-hood analytics on site progress to the sponsors, but they can also view and participate in online meetings, chat with other investigators, and get the latest study info 24/7-and all via mobile app.   Knight says he purposely designed TRIAL360 with every potential use case scenario in mind. Secure logins, customizable study names for the study-initiator licensing the platform, and content that includes:

• Protocol development, review and approval

• Investigator site recruitment, training and engagement

• Vendor selection and preparation

• Shared resource libraries

• Disease specific information

• Patient recruitment and retention

• Data analysis ad boards and read out milestones

Trial initiators-ie., platform licensees-can be a sponsor, CRO, investigator-initiated or academic center-initiated researcher. Again, the goal is to keep the investigators and site staff engaged. Even patients could access information from their stakeholder-specific login for study information, if the initiator so chooses. As the clinical trials landscape changes, and the need to find specific patients and enroll them through their physician-investigator becomes more important, a platform that facilitates engaged and informed networking and training could bring the necessary glue needed to the process.