Aardex and Cambridge Cognition cooperate on decentralized trials
Aardex Group is a company that develops medication event monitoring systems (MEMS), which can be used to describe, measure, and manage patient adherence behavior in relation to medication. As part of the company’s agreement with Cambridge Cognition, Aardex will provide access to its MEMS dosing capture and analytics system.
Cambridge Cognition is a neuroscience technology company that offers cognitive assessment through digital health solutions. By employing Aardex’s technology, Cambridge Cognition will be able to track patient adherence to medication, and instances where ‘concerning medicine-taking behaviour’ is noted can be flagged by the system.
The data capture by the MEMS AS system is then synced through to Cambridge Cognition Clinpal research database, which collects data from participants, sites, and laboratories. The integration of this information allows users of the system to access all study data from one location.
Poor adherence to trial protocol
“We are delighted to be progressing our strategic partnership with the Clinpal team at Cambridge Cognition. Poor adherence to the trial protocol can lead to safety concerns, underestimations of drug efficacy, and drain study power, even to the point of trial failure,” said Bernard Vrijens, scientific lead, Aardex.
Cambridge Cognition acquired the Clinpal platform through a deal to buy eClinicalHealth last year. The research platform at the heart of the deal is designed to manage virtual, hybrid, and direct-to-patient studies. The platform provides video consultation, electronic informed consent, and a research database.
Through the platform, patients can log in from anywhere and on any device to access information on their clinical trial, and study teams can utilize the data and analytics generated by the platform.
Patient medicine-taking behavior
With the addition of Aardex’s technology, the Clinpal service will be able to provide adherence data through the Clinpal application. As a result, the system will be able to help investigators understand patient medicine-taking behavior during a study, while requiring no additional action for study researchers.
According to Aardex, the platform has been adopted by Trials@Home, a consortium that includes academic partners, pharma companies, and other businesses, to help set up and foster the use of decentralized clinical trials.
The consortium includes Sanofi, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer, as the industry movement towards greater adoption of decentralized trials has grown, with the increased usage of such technologies occasioned by the pandemic.
