UBC — a Blue Bell, PA based late-stage research and patient support organization — is partnering with Seqster – a San Diego-based company – to speed up the clinical trials enrollment process.
The partnership will allow UBC to leverage Seqster’s technology — it gathers data from disparate sources to allow people build their own comprehensive patient medical record — to provide an essential piece of the decentralized research studies puzzle that has previously proven a sticking point: obtaining patient medical records to determine clinical trail eligibility. Specifically, Seqster technology will enable patients to consolidate their own medical records, that may ultimately speed up patient enrollment in decentralized and hybrid trials and moving research forward faster.
“We were searching for a best-in-class patient-mediated medical record release solution that would allow us to bring leading edge decentralized and hybrid study designs to our clients. Seqster’s patient centric technology solution and the vision of their leadership team stood out in our scan of the landscape,” said Aaron Berger, executive director of U.S. late stage operations at UBC, who leads the firm’s U.S. clinical operations and biometrics offerings. “Our point of view is that their offering will be a vital component of the ‘operating system’ for modernized decentralized studies going forward.”
Seqster’s platform draws in information from patients’ electronic health records, genomic data and wearable device data. The company says it connects to more than 4,000 hospitals and 150,000 clinics.
Decentralized clinical trails have gained momentum over the pandemic when people were afraid to go to a medical site for fear of being exposed to the coronavirus. Many of the elements needed to actualize such studies already exist. For example, study protocols can involve sending a nurse to a patient’s home to administer medication or a doctor can do a telehealth visit with the patient for the trial, Berger said. However, gathering potential patient’s medical files proved an elusive part of the decentralized study design, and one that UBC hopes the partnership with Seqster will solve.
When companies look to enroll patients, patients need to gather their medical records by going to each provider, or by asking their primary care provider for records. Often, primary care records are incomplete and require the provider to contact other physicians who may have treated the patient in the past in order to compile a comprehensive and complete medical record. This is especially true of patients who maybe battling multiple conditions.
Doing so takes time. In some cases, the patient might have to be forced to manage that situation herself, said Berger.
This partnership with Seqster will enable patients to use Seqster’s technology to compile their medical records themselves.
“Barriers to acquiring consolidated and harmonized medical records for research exist today. Our partnership with Seqster will bring to life optimized study designs that conquer these barriers that were once rate limiting to the realization of the full potential of decentralized and direct to patient research models,” Berger said.
Photo: Ghetty Images
