The Role of data in Phar­maceu­ti­cal Indus­try and clini­cal trials

Back­ground

Not all pati­ents who are diagno­sed with Auto­an­ti­bo­dies in Breast Cancer Detec­tion (ABCD) may respond to treat­ment and drugs available today. Their last alter­na­tive is to explore drugs and treat­ment in clini­cal trials. Unfort­u­na­tely, avai­la­bi­lity of such infor­ma­tion in a coher­ent simple to under­stand plat­form is a luxury. Clini­cal trials are done when all available treat­ments have proven unsuc­cessful yet the process of enrol­ling in a clini­cal trial can be expen­sive, time consum­ing and compli­ca­ted for the pati­ents. High cost of rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment in drug design results in higher drug prices and higher insu­rance premi­ums. The US govern­ment esti­ma­tes that as at May 2018, only 3% of cancer pati­ents are enrol­led for clini­cal trials. How can clini­cal trials be made less expen­sive, effi­ci­ent and more acces­si­ble to patients?

Data­sets used

One of the reasons why clini­cal trials fail is due to data coll­ec­tion process. A first step is access to cura­ted data­base of clini­cal trials where pati­ents can directly search based on cate­go­ries and loca­tion. In addi­tion, anony­mi­sed pati­ent infor­ma­tion and drug analy­sis report can be viewed on the data market­place. Avai­la­bi­lity of this infor­ma­tion rather than oral recom­men­da­tion from health person­nel will increase the percen­tage of pati­ents invol­ved in such clini­cal trials. The process even beco­mes more effi­ci­ent when the Rese­arch team have digi­tal copies (not pdf or fax) of pati­ent medi­cal records and previous treat­ment reports. The Adva­neo data market­place has been deve­lo­ped to address this.

Adva­neo Data Marketplace

Among the nume­rous features of the data market­place of rele­vance to the health­care sector espe­ci­ally clini­cal trials is ensu­ring secu­rity and privacy while faci­li­ta­ting seam­less exch­ange of data to selec­ted medi­cal insti­tu­ti­ons. The Adva­neo data market­place offers:



Secu­rity and Privacy: No data­set will be stored on the market­place rather, veri­fied data endpoints to where such infor­ma­tion can be obtai­ned is provi­ded in addi­tion to a stan­dar­di­sed descrip­tion of the data­set (meta­data). The data provi­der (patient/hospital) main­ta­ins the data­set with 100% data governance.



Broker Service: Supple­men­tary infor­ma­tion such as dietary habits, acti­vity and sleep cycle can be inde­pendently gathe­red by the pati­ent using a variety of smart­phone apps and weara­bles. This data which belongs to the pati­ent can be shared freely or traded by the pati­ent. Our broker service ensu­res this is done with no compli­ca­ted over­head on the data provi­der. Such data­sets will prevent depen­dence on subjec­tive response during clini­cal trials.



Closed User Groups: The progress and final results of clini­cal trials can become trade secrets that should kept private to parties invol­ved in the process. The data market­place provi­des the option to create closed user groups. The exis­tence of such groups and members will remain inco­gnito. More importantly the meta­data is only visi­ble by the members of the group and the data­set are exch­ange directly between pairs.

Impact

The search for appro­priate drugs to treat cancer by using clini­cal trial analy­sis is curr­ently a long expen­sive process. Colla­tion and avai­la­bi­lity of high quality data­sets will be a signi­fi­cant step towards trans­forming the process. In addi­tion, the possi­bi­li­ties become endless when machine lear­ning tools are applied to these data­sets for pati­ent to clini­cal trial matching, early anomaly diagno­sis and data driven drug design process. The avai­la­bi­lity of data will also aid machine lear­ning appli­ca­ti­ons in preven­tion and early diagno­sis of health pande­mics. In fact, deep lear­ning appli­ca­ti­ons will contri­bute 3 billion dollars to the health­care sector by 2025. This will lead to signi­fi­cant reduc­tion in cost of health­care while crea­ting new busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties in the health­care sector.