In the futuristic development of clinical research, technology has been a phenomenal source to achieve the unprecedented landmark in diagnoses and treatment. In an industry where the lack of creativity was playing a terrible role, the new era of scientific breakthroughs brought in new opportunities to savor clinical trials. The fast growing technology-enabled clinical research organizations stretch out their expertise to create new innovation in patient care and connectivity.
In fact, the relation between digital technology and patient-centric approach is rapidly changing because of the technology enabled information sharing systems. Therefore, patients can receive the required health care data from the vast stores of real world data available in the relevant clinical research companies. Further, the collected data serves the clinical management authorities providing health care experts a comprehensive report. Depending upon the analyses results of patients, advanced treatment shall be referred. Clinical trials involving the development and delivery of new treatments seek steadfast approach and that can be carried out with the application of technology driven monitoring devices.
Sources empowering technology-enabled clinical research
Not only dedicated medical tools and machines serve clinical research but also other by-products of technology such as sensors, mobile, cloud, analytic’s, and various social media technologies share their respective contribution. One of the benevolent features of technology in clinical research management is the crowdsourcing opportunity. Crowdsourcing is the process or a kind of support to fellow healthcare authorities that allows sharing real-world patient data that has been used for research in pooled databases.
The usage of “wearables” is another boom in the clinical research industry where the technology-enabled organizations enlist fit bits and other gadgets strapped a particular patient’s chest, wrist, and skin for the purpose of bringing drugs to market faster. It has to be mentioned that, the tools were initially used an aid for athletes and dieters. The significance of wearables is, it can be tested in trial participants to collect detailed information and complete data anticipating the streamline of trials and better understanding whether a drug is working. As a companion to curb health costs, these can also help pharmaceutical makers prove to insurance companies that their treatment is effective.
Potential drug researchers have proved in their study that these tracking technologies surpasses the accuracy of human memory which is actually based on subjective questionnaires requesting patients to rate their ability to walk on a generic scale (say 0 to 4).
Back pain monitoring seems to be the significant achievement of this technology. Upon outfitting the participants with a small rectangular lightweight monitor that sticks to their chests, the device downloads all the biometric data that is stored through a Bluetooth connection (The process is initiated once the patient near a wireless router about the size of a mobile phone).
These types of pedometers and sensors are customized to meet the consumer-focused demands and they are lightweight, slick and looks super cool with a long battery life.
Prospective analyses of technology enabled devices
Major companies using the growth of technology to aid their clinical research requirements do face certain limitations without being able to withstand the tremendous promise of these technological advancements. The most important concern to be addressed is making the technology developments generic. In the case of using wearable’s (for instance), it’s reported that the ratio of uptake varies drastically between men and women revealing a greater number of men patients. The nature of such technology is also said to behave differently when being monitored. With the constant research and development, if we could able to overcome these limitations and democratize clinical research, it is foretold that the technology enabled companies could transform patient research into population research in the near future.