Aiming to halve clinical trial timelines and negotiate pandemic disruptions, Datavant has become the latest services company to partner with decentralized study company Medable.
The deal, which comes after the pair had already been working together specifically on getting new diagnostics and treatments out for COVID-19, now deepens to allow Datavant to integrate its tech into Medable’s decentralized trials platform, which will see trial teams combine real-world health records, claims, diagnostic and other sources with their clinical trial data.
“This will eliminate various manual and time-intensive steps that slow down clinical trials, while also improving patient access and helping trial teams optimize evidence generation during and after studies,” with the bold claim that this could slash trial timelines by up to 50%.
The deal comes as the FDA is encouraging pharmas and CROs to engage with virtual or decentralized models that use telemedicine tech to run trials from people’s homes and away from central sites that have become increasingly difficult to operate amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
It also follows similar pacts by the likes of PPD—which is tapping another virtual trial specialist, Science 37, for its “siteless” approach to trials—as well as LabCorp’s Covance.
San Francisco-based Datavant’s tech allows the linking of traditional healthcare data sources like electronic medical records, claims and diagnostics with other emerging sources such as genomics, socioeconomic data, information from wearable devices and behavioral data.
“Making it easier to integrate multiple data sources is an important step in our mission to reduce clinical trial timelines by 50%,” said Michelle Longmire, M.D., CEO and co-founder of Medable. “Datavant provides us with a broad array of built-in connections to real-world data sources, which can now be combined to yield a more holistic view of patient health than clinical trial data alone.”
“Accelerating the pace of clinical development will help patients get access to life-saving therapies more quickly,” added Travis May, Datavant CEO. “We’re excited to help power Medable’s work in accelerating clinical trials by making it easier to connect to the ecosystem of real-world data.”