How IBM Study Advance Will Reduce The Time And Costs Associated With Clinical Trials

By Amit Chowdhry • Feb 19, 2020
  • IBM Watson Health recently unveiled its newest cloud-based technology IBM Study Advance at the 11th Annual Summit for Clinical Ops Executives (SCOPE)

IBM Watson Health recently unveiled its newest cloud-based technology IBM Study Advance at the 11th Annual Summit for Clinical Ops Executives (SCOPE). And the data-driven study design tool was designed to optimize clinical trial protocol design by merging automated access to real-world patient population data, standardizing protocol template guidance, and providing a collaborative workspace designed to facilitate efficiency.

A single protocol amendment to a Phase III clinical trial can result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in unplanned expenses and add several months to the project timeline. And IBM Study Advance is designed to offer critical insights during the process of study design to help reduce the number of amendments during clinical trials.

Plus the tool is designed with an interface to provide access to commercial and claims data from de-identified patient profiles covering 89 million lives from multiple employer-sponsored U.S. healthcare beneficiaries as well as tools to assess the impact of inclusion and exclusion criteria on the eligible patient population.

IBM Study Advance’s collaborative workspace was designed to allow near real-time collaboration with study design team members who can manage and assign the team to specific sections of the protocol. And the workspace is also designed to provide access to standard protocol templates and version control capabilities with complete traceability back to changes thus aiming to reduce the average time required to author a clinical trial protocol.

“Currently, 80% of trials experience delays in recruiting and one out of four amendments were considered completely avoidable,” said Rob DiCicco, Deputy Chief Health Officer of IBM Watson Health at IBM. “Breakdowns in the clinical trial process, including issues caused by study design decisions, may potentially delay access to life-changing therapies for patients. IBM Study Advance aims to remove the barriers in clinical development to help researchers efficiently bring necessary therapies to patients.”