Sanofi taps TriNetX to up efficiency: ‘We’re at a stage of true transformation’
Cambridge, MA-based TriNetX operates a cloud-accessible federated health research platform.
The company’s technology – which has also been adopted by contract research organizations (CROs) such as Icon – uses data from electronic health records (EHRs), including demographics, diagnoses, procedures, medications, labs, and genomics, to reduce trial design complexity, catalyze recruitment, and help streamline trial investigator work.
Sanofi has been one of the early adopters of the TriNetX platform, and will use the platform for protocol design, patient feasibility analysis and site selection, Maulik Mehta, senior vice president, business development, TriNetX, told Outsourcing-Pharma.com.
The goal of the partnership is “to simplify and to make better, earlier, and more informed decisions,” said Vicky DiBiaso, Global Head of Clinical Operations Strategy & Collaboration within Sanofi’s R&D organization.
“Our data have shown that Sanofi is able to use innovation to positively impact our efficiencies,” she told us. “We’re hoping that this will further accelerate what we’ve already been able to capitalize on.”
Rolling out to the whole Sanofi portfolio
After experiencing early success in a pilot stage, Sanofi fully implemented the TriNetX technology across its entire portfolio last January.
“Over past year we’ve been very strongly integrating their data components and their analytics and simulation capabilities along with the clinical trial selection service that comes with the technology,” said DiBiaso. “So it made perfect sense for us to want to work with them in a more collaborative manner.”
Initially established as a multiyear partnership, DiBiaso said she is hopeful it will be a very robust and long-term relationship.
200 days faster than average
“I really fundamentally think that we’re at a point now where the innovations that we’re looking at have the opportunities to transform the efficiencies and productivities of research,” she said – noting that Sanofi’s median development cycle time is 200 days faster than the average, per CMR industry benchmarking.
DiBiaso, who has worked in the industry for several decades, said she has never seen a point in time where innovation was been so closely connected to clinical research.
“Pharma sits on lots of data and being able to leverage that intelligence in combination with external data partners presents opportunities to accelerate clinical research,” said Mehta.
As part of this, Sanofi has also established a relationship with Science 37, a Los Angeles, CA-based company that facilities digital clinical trials. It has also partnered with Evidation, a company which identifies and monitors digital biomarkers in patients.
“The external capabilities now are so vast that I think we’re having to look outside – and for good reasons,” said DiBiaso.
Much like TriNetX, the Science 37 platform also helps Sanofi find potential clinical trial participants. In the future, DiBiaso said technology could allow the company precisely identify the geographies of potential patients.
“A lot of the things we hear from patients and patients groups now is that the hardest thing that they are facing is finding out where clinical trials are and how to match,” she said.
However, through collaboration, Sanofi is able to bring the research to the patient, explained DiBisaso.
“I think we’re at a stage of true transformation,” she said. “It’s really an end to end convergence … of taking innovation and taking technology and applying it to entire development continuum.”
