Telemedicine Making Clinical Drug Trials Faster and Cheaper

Clinical trials are a cornerstone of medical advancement. Clinical trials not only help medical professionals to determine whether a medication or piece of medical equipment is effective, but they also provide important safety information to doctors. While a particular medication may be effective at a certain level, it will likely have a limit to its effectiveness over a specific amount. In addition, some medications have contraindications, meaning they might have a negative effect when mixed with other medications or foods.

The Problems With Clinical Trials

While clinical trials provide a number of important benefits, they also have a major drawback: time. In most cases, a clinical trial will require patients to make an initial office visit to fill out paperwork and undergo testing to determine whether they are fit for the study. From there, additional visits for testing and questioning may be required. Once a patient is admitted into a clinical trial, he or she will often have to visit the testing offices regularly to provide information about the effects of the medication and their conditions. After the trial is over, patients will then have to engage in more visits for further evaluation. All of this is time consuming, meaning potentially life-saving drugs can take years to hit the consumer market.

How Telemedicine is Changing Things

Telemedicine, or technology that mixes the Internet with medical advancements, is changing the way clinical trials operate in a good way. Patients participating in clinical trials can now interact with doctors and even other study participants virtually to report their conditions and the effects they have experiences from using various medications and medical technologies. This speeds up the time it takes to complete a clinical trial in a big way, allowing medications to hit the market faster.

Sharing Information Globally

Another advantage that telemedicine provides to the medical community when it comes to clinical trials is that information can be shared globally. In the past, clinical trials and their results would typically only be available to patients and doctors in the study’s local area. This severely limited studies because different regions and countries have different challenges. The diet of one community could be totally different than another, and this could affect the outcome of the clinical trial. Using telemedicine, trail organizers can now include participants from across the globe to see the effectiveness of a medication or piece of medical equipment in a much broader way.

Additionally, telemedicine technology provides doctors the ability to share study results in real-time, meaning more patients can be helped faster. This means that shared information can greatly benefit future patient health and the FDA (or local governing body associated with medications) approval process can move much more swiftly.

Getting More Study Participants

Because telemedicine can be used globally, it can also bring in more study participants than traditional methods. In a traditional clinical trial, participants are limited because only so many people qualify. Because of telemedicine, trial organizers can search for patients around the world who meet specific requirements to take part in the study. Because these participants can meet with organizers via the Internet, they can be located far from the study’s headquarters and still make a meaningful contribution.

Another barrier that has been broken by telemedicine is language. Previously, clinical trials that involved people from other countries not only required expensive travel costs, but also on-site translators who would also likely have to travel. When using telemedicine, researchers can bring in translators virtually at a much lower cost. Also, there are plenty of text translation services available online that are either free or available at little cost.

Speaking of cost, traditional methods of carrying out clinical trials can be very costly, both for participants and for trial organizers. Travel costs, medical offices, and more can end up costing thousands of dollars per participant, especially given the great length of time that traditional clinical trials require. This can then result in some participants dropping out of a trial due to costs, further delaying results.

With telemedicine, costs for all can be greatly reduced since participants are checking in virtually. This means no driving to and from a doctor’s office, no overhead for the trial organizer, and because telemedicine allows for faster trials, costs for personnel are also lessened. Depending on the trial and its size, this can amount to millions saved each year to bring a new drug or treatment to market.

Universities Can Have the Best of Both Worlds

Universities have traditionally been the organizers of clinical trials because they have forward-thinking students and faculty as well as a large pool of participants from which to recruit. With the addition of telemedicine, establishments of higher learning can reap the benefits of both worlds. In these situations, a university can source clinical trial recruits on-campus while still seeking participants around the world. This advantage may even make clinical trials stronger since researchers will have the ability to measure results against one another, comparing telemedicine results to in-person results.

Ultimately, this can also help to direct the future of telemedicine in clinical trials. Researchers will be able to have a firmer grasp of just how effective telemedicine is when discussing medication effects with participants. In person, participants can be evaluated more thoroughly, and if these evaluations match closely with evaluations of telemedicine participants, researchers can have a better certainty that their methods are working. This then goes a long way in presenting findings to the FDA or other health governing agencies around the world.

Drawbacks to Telemedicine in Clinical Trials

Part of the problem with telemedicine, however, is that communities that often need new medications the most are often impoverished and do not have access to the Internet or communication devices. These areas tend to be rural or located in poor countries, leaving doctors with few options to use telemedicine during clinical trials. As time goes on, the hope is that the entire global medical community will eventually be connected online, and some companies, such as Facebook, are mulling over plans to provide free satellite Internet to areas that experience such issues. Whether this will happen remains to be seen, but hope is on the horizon.

Another issue with telemedicine as it relates to clinical trials is that participants are not able to be physically examined. While it’s true that a doctor can view a patient using telemedicine via video chat, there is a large difference between being in an office and being on a video monitor. What may look like a bruise on-screen may actually turn out to be a blood clot in reality.

Also, monitoring equipment plays a small role in telemedicine. In a doctor’s office, there are many pieces of equipment available to check a patient’s internal conditions, but through telemedicine, the doctor simply has to go by what the patient says he or she is experiencing. Because everyone is different, things like pain descriptions may not be enough for a doctor to accurately use to judge effectiveness in a clinical trial.

To remedy this, technology companies are working on developing at-home monitoring equipment that provides feedback to a doctor using telemedicine. Unfortunately, most of the early versions of these monitoring devices are cost-prohibitive. In time, costs will likely fall, but for now, most patients who would participate in a clinical trial just don’t have the funds available to make such purchases.

Decentralization is a Challenge

One thing that could throw a wrench into the works when it comes to telemedicine and clinical trials is decentralization. While this method of conducting trials does grant organizers the ability to coordinate globally and gain more study participants, it decentralizes the process. This means that there are data challenges as participants may be reporting during different times of the month. In order to ensure accuracy, great attention to detail must be taken so that analytics and metrics are accurate. When you’re dealing with medical issues, there is no margin for error.

Telemedicine Set to Grow

Despite the current challenges to telemedicine in clinical trials, there are plenty of diligent professionals currently working to get around drawbacks. Because the Internet is integrated into so much of today’s medical community, telemedicine is only set to grow and become more advantageous in time. Many physicians’ offices are now using telemedicine services to treat patients at home, and clinical trials will benefit from this in the end. As patients become more comfortable with utilizing telemedicine, clinical trial organizers will have an easier time recruiting people to participate in studies.

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Andrew Rusnak is an author who writes on topics that include medical technology and digital marketing strategies.