Medidata's president Glen de Vries told us one of the biggest complaints the company hears pertains to the amount of time spent entering data as part of the clinical trial process.
“It’s not what you should be doing all day,” he said, adding that electronically moving data from the system of record to the clinical trial data set, is where the new eConnect program comes into play.
The Medidata eConnect Partner Program specifically enables the integration of healthcare data, such as electronic health records (EHRs), electronic medical records (EMRs), and clinical trial electronic source data (eSource) system, into the Medidata Clinical Cloud.
de Vries explained that by leveraging the program, companies will improve their data quality “with a more cost effective approach to data management or monitoring.”
In the future, de Vries said his hope is that by encouraging people to get rid of person-based transcription that companies will be able to reduce site visits as well.
He also referenced the period between a patient visit and when that data is available to the CRO – “usually, the data is entered once into the system of record … and then that data gets transcribed into a clinical trial system, like the Medidata Cloud,” he said.
However, if this connection is electronic, de Vries said “there’s no reason that as soon as the data is available that it can wind up in the system of record that the CRO is using,” setting up users to have a “much better cycle time on all subsequent activities.”
As per reimbursement, the new program could also help accelerate payment to the day of or the day after a patient visit, which de Vries said could have a “ginormous impact on the relationship between a CRO and a site.”
Ultimately, de Vries explained that the closed loop created with the program will accelerate the data cycle time involved in clinical trials to a “time cycle that is appropriate in today’s agile world of information.”