Cambridge Cognition adds virtual clinic trials through acquisition
Cambridge Cognition is a digital technology company that provides cognitive assessments for brain health research through a range of digital health solutions. By acquiring eClinicalHealth (eCH), the company will be able to offer clients a fully integrated solution covering all trial modules, from recruitment to clinical reporting, it stated.
According to eCH, the company currently works with three of the top 10 largest pharmaceutical companies to organize virtual clinical trials through its Clinpal platform.
Clinpal is an end-to-end clinical research platform that was designed to manage virtual, hybrid, and direct-to-patients studies. Through Clinpal, eCH states that patients can log in from anywhere and on any device, while study teams can use the data and analytics generated by the use of the platform.
eCH’s CEO, Karl Landert, stated on the news: “As a wholly owned subsidiary of Cambridge Cognition we can deliver Decentralized Clinical Trials (DCT) on a global scale and become a world-leading DCT platform. We will jointly develop offerings for the Central Nervous systems (CNS) therapeutic area where DCT elements show the highest growth rate.”
For its part, Cambridge Cognition pointed to the rapid growth of DCTs during the pandemic as one of the primary drivers for making the acquisition. In particular, the company highlighted that the overall virtual clinical trial market is now valued at $7.8bn (€8bn), with a projected annual growth rate of 14%.
The trend towards DCTs began early into the pandemic, when companies and investors understood that the adoption of virtual trials would be accelerated by reduce access to physical trials, and could be at the forefront of clinical research moving into the future. The overall advantages of DCTs are the ability to overcome some of the chronic issues facing clinical trials, such as recruitment, retention, and trial diversity.
According to Cambridge Cognition, virtual clinical trials for CNS disorders are a particularly good fit because of the range of digital cognitive assessment and electronic clinical outcomes assessments (eCOAs) that have been developed in the area.
Matthew Stork, CEO of Cambridge Cognition, said: “[The acquisition] both makes us immediately more competitive in the CNS virtual trials space and opens the wider Cambridge Cognition business to their established client base of major pharmaceutical, medical device and contract research organizations.”
Previously, Cambridge Cognition’s services had been contracted by the US Department of Defense on a trial for post-traumatic stress disorder, in July of this year. The company will offer its Cantab platform for cognitive assessment, as the US department seeks to develop a precision medicine approach to the disorder.
