SCOPE Summit 2025: Pamela Tenaerts of Medable Discusses Research From PACT Consortium Linking DCTs and Increased Diversity

ACT: Could you share your thoughts on the recent findings from Tufts CSDD’s PACT Consortium linking the use of decentralized elements to increased diversity?

Tenaerts: I'm really proud of Medable’s support of the PACT Consortium. What we set out to do is to collect data on what using technology and decentralized elements in clinical trials would do and after analyzing about 70 trials, 20 of which do not have a database locket, so we don't have full data, we learned that there are some changes in the representation of the trials that use decentralized elements, and what we're finding is that we might have better access to certain groups of people that we know need to participate in trials, because the rule of clinical trials is that you should study the medical product in the people that live with the condition. Historically, we haven't been that great at it, and this is the way where we've learned that Asian populations are increased when using decentralized elements by about 50% from 14 to about 20% and that Alaska Natives and American Indians were actually almost four times as represented in clinical trials when using DCT elements. What we're learning is that we probably need to tailor the DCT element to the different populations we want to reach because, for example, African American participation was increased when you look to use local labs, so it's not going to be every element getting you better representation of everything, but what we're finding is that—and that was the goal too—is learning what the best fit-for-purpose solution is to get you what you want. The good news is it's not a binary decision you have to make, you don't have to choose for reaching the right populations. We also learned that when you deploy technology, actual timelines actually beat planned timelines, so there's an incentive for speed as well.