9/30/2016  A clarification of Trial Match's process was made in paragraph five.

By Benjamin Ross

September 28, 2016 | When it comes to engaging with potential enrollees, many clinical trials fail to attain the numbers of participants required in order to conduct proper research. There are a plethora of reasons for this, from myriad rigid regulations to the general lack of awareness on the part of the patients looking for clinical trials. Companies such as TrialsLoop and Genospace are looking to provide services that open links between clinical trials and their participants that will benefit the medical community and, ultimately, the world we live in.

Matchmakers Of Medicine: Genospace

Yesterday, Genospace announced the launch of Trial Match, a mobile application that enables real time clinical trial matching based on molecular profiling and other clinical data at the point of care. According to Genospace, “less than 4% of cancer patients enroll in trials each year, more than 80% of trials fail to meet original enrollment timelines, and nearly 1/3 of trial budgets are spent on recruitment.” Genospace Trial Match hopes to improve those statistics with a mobile app that allows doctors and nurses to provide quick recommendations for their patients to clinical trials.

Genospace, which won the Best of Show Award at the 2014 Bio-IT World Conference, combines analytical capabilities with clinical data. The goal of the Genospace Trial Match is to match patients to trials in a mobile app. This new app allows physicians to bridge the gap between patients looking for clinical trials and sponsors looking for participants. Through Trial Match doctors are able to identify which patient fits the criteria of a given clinical trial and vice versa.

The concept of allowing patients and physicians in clinical trials to engage with one another is not a new mobile gem the Genospace team have discovered. However, Genospace is confident that its mobile app will stand out thanks its database of information. The sophistication of the matching database is what separates Trial Match from the competition, said Mick Correll, CEO of Genospace. The mobile app uses new EMR, molecular, or clinical trial information to provide recommendations for individual clients, as well as a rating recommendations based on the strength of the match. The search engine uses molecular data that harmonizes results useful to both the sponsors of clinical trials and the physicians who refer patients for those trials.

The process is simple enough. According to a statement from Genospace, "All of the patient's information is integrated into Trial Match at the enterprise level. This means that when a nurse or doctor meets with a patient, the clinician just opens the app and looks up the patient--all of the relevant information is already in the app. The nurse or doctor can just focus on meeting with the patient and reviewing matching trials." A sophisticated matching algorithm links potential trials with the qualifications of the patients. When matches are updated, the physicians receive notifications on their phone and can refer their patients in seconds. Once they receive the notifications, “physicians can set up appointments, email trials details to patients, contact trial principal investigators, or set reminders for follow up.”

Genospace is hoping that this new app will combine the complexity of clinical data with the speed and efficiency of a mobile app. If the app is everything Genospace hopes it to be, Trial Match could place the point of clinical trial care in the palm of one’s hand.

The Reviews Are In: TrialsLoop

A website launched earlier this month takes the phrase “placing power in the palm of your hands” quite literally. “Empowering Patients with Patient Experiences” is the motto of TrialsLoop, a website that allows participants in clinical trials to provide reviews of their experience. The website was launched in an effort to eliminate the mystery and confusion that can sometimes bog down the individual who is seeking information about clinical trials.

“We ask patients who are going through clinical trials to share their experience with other patients… who want to be a part of clinical trials,” says CEO and Co-Founder of TrialsLoop, Chance Curtis, in an interview with Clinical Informatics News. It’s helpful for prospective participants in clinical trials “to see the importance of participating and to see what exactly goes on behind the scenes,” he says.

Curtis has a personal reason in providing this service; he had an aunt that was diagnosed with breast cancer who had been fishing for clinical trials. However, she gave up her search for clinical trials due to lack of information. “If there was something available at that time for [participants in clinical trials] to use as an outlet and share [their] experience, I believe more people would be involved in clinical trials, and less clinical trials would be delayed because of [a lack of] recruitment,” Curtis says. “We don’t want people to feel as though there isn’t another option or they just aren’t informed by another patient’s voice.”

TrialsLoop is in uncharted territory with the launch of its site, as it allows the participants in clinical trials to have a strong presence in the clinical trials industry. “From what I’ve seen, this is the first website [that does this kind of thing],” remarks Curtis. The obvious question to ask, then: Why has it taken so long for a website that provides the kinds of services TrialsLoop does to be launched? Curtis points to an fear of unblinding clinical trials that has led to both rigid policies and “old, unwritten rules” that are currently in place in the sphere of the clinical trial community.

This concern has naturally led members of the medical field to be skeptical of the ambitions of TrialsLoop. TrialsLoop recently had the opportunity to outline a detailed plan of what the website hoped to accomplish to doctors and representatives in the clinical trials field. “Once we explained what we were actually doing, then they said, ‘This makes sense. This could actually help us in our own clinical trials,’” Curtis recalls. Though he admits that some representatives are not yet convinced, and prefer to sit back and see how people respond to the site.

The passive response of these representatives seems natural, as there are several kinks the website needs to work out. For instance, the problem of unblinding clinical trials is still a prominent one, and so far TrialsLoop’s answers to the issue are vague. “The only information that the public will see on our site is the patient’s summary of their experience,” Curtis explained in a later interview with Clinical Informatics via email.  

“For example: ‘Dr. John Doe and his staff were beyond helpful throughout the trial. They educated me on the treatment in terms that I could understand. I would suggest that people be more involved with clinical trials and forget the myths that are being said.’” 

When asked how he will ensure such reviews will follow such a pattern, Curtis responded, "By curating reviews we will ensure unblinding does not happen. There will be guidelines and directions for the patient to follow when leaving their summary review." 

TrialsLoop is confident in their product, saying the system they use is one that we use all the time. “Think of it as using a review the same way you would to make everyday decisions in your life,” Curtis illustrates. “Whether it’s going to restaurants, a tire shop, a dentist, anything. Anything in your life, before you go, you check and see what other people have to say or think about that business.” Keeping this in mind, Curtis believes that the humanistic, word-of-mouth approach to clinical trials will be of tremendous impact in the medical field. “This is an opportunity to bring [the review] concept over to clinical trials because clinical trials are important; we need them for the future of medicine. And if we don’t have the people to participate, then we can’t make the necessary advances in medicine that we need to become a great society.”