Per the arrangement, the agreement involves merging Medidata’s Rave Imaging technology with Medpace’s imaging systems and workflow.
Importance of imaging
According to Medidata, the industry’s reliance on images facilitates a need for more seamless imaging processes. They stated more than 50% of all studies incorporate medical imaging, and that number can climb to 95% for oncological studies.
Dan Braga, vice president of product management for Medidata, told Outsourcing-Pharma said the partnership and the resulting joint solution will overcome a common obstacle the industry faces.
“Historically, sites participating in clinical trials would use a variety of solutions when participating in a clinical trial. That resulted in multiple URLs, usernames, and passwords, leading to a less than desirable experience for sites and all involved,” he said.
The new technology, Braga added, will help overcome a number of challenges, including data sharing.
“One of the biggest problems with imaging in clinical trials is the need for data contained or acquired in EDC or other systems to be available to the imaging core labs, as well as vice versa—imaging data and activities performed by the imaging core lab to be made available in the EDC solution,” he said. “It is that real-time data reconciliation concept that our partnership is making a reality."
Combining forces
Mehdi Adineh, executive director of Medpace’s Imaging Core Laboratory, told us that several sites already use both his and Medidata’s products in different ways, so the unification of the technologies made sense. Additionally, he said, his company has had the creation of more streamlined imaging workflow in its sights for some time.
“Our long-term objective has been to combine the most powerful systems, imaging experts and regulatory-compliant processes to create a seamless workflow in which imaging biomarkers are required for early discovery phase or late phase efficacy/safety assessments,” he said.
“This partnership paves the way for designing an efficient workflow in which the entire chain of image data is managed within a single system to ensure data quality and integrity,” Adineh added.
Braga added the technology also "focuses on the site experience and how we can reduce data entry, increase speed, and ensure higher quality data submissions."
According to Medidata, the combined platform will provide a single location for site data and image uploads, optimize resources and workflow, reduce manual steps, compute quantitative imaging biomarkers, and craft a more streamlined and effective way to manage imaging components.