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:
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.
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.
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.
