Decentralized Clinical Trials (DCT):

Decentralized clinical trials (DCTs) are the focus point in many industry discussions and activities due to numerous benefits for patients and researchers, including high clinical trial efficiency. Clinical trials have largely traversed from site-based traditional trials to site-less DCTs, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. But it comes with a challenge from all the stakeholders.

DCT is not a newly found concept and it has evolved in the past few years with adding more services to increase the convenience and compliance of participating in clinical trials for the patients. DCT also has different names, such as direct-to-patient trials, patient-centric trials, home-based trials, and virtual trials.

There are so many potential benefits of DCT and a few of them are as follows:

1. Enhancing the diversity and the population of patients: DCT brings the clinical research closer to the patients by moving it to a more convenient location like their homes or a local clinic. This allows more patients with different health conditions to engage actively in the clinical trials.
2. Extending the study to remote places: Patients in remote areas will also be interested in participating in these clinic studies, which gives a wide range of authenticity.
3. Improve patient engagement and retention: According to a 2020 status, the average patient dropout rate increased. Patient-oriented clinical research increases the satisfaction and retention of the participants, which helps to reduces the cost and risk of patients dropping out, significantly.
4. Collecting high-quality diversified data: With new technologies adaption, DCT offers a steady stream of high-quality, diversified data that patients capture regularly. 

Clinical staff at the sites are expected to study numerous clinical systems while managing patient care. Due to the cognitive overload of the professionals, the accuracy and efficiency of the clinical trials are reduced. Moreover, it makes them add new more DCT technologies without any prior evaluation or tests, worsening the existing problem. Having to face these issues, COSMOS integrated clinical trials echo system, which offers CTMS, eDOCS, eSource, ePRO, eConsent, Televisit, eLabs, etc in its platform. If properly handled and operated by the sponsors, sites, and CROs, DCT can demonstrate efficient clinic trials while maintaining high standards of patient care and delivering high-quality data.

A Next-Gen Business Model for Clinical Trials?

To fulfill the DCT requirement, COSMOS team has envisioned and adopted the upcoming change with an integrated into its echo system, which comprises modern features like Televisit, eCOA/ePRO, eConsent, and eLabs in the platform along with the other features like CTMS, eDOCs, and eSource. The convenience and efficiency of participating in the clinical trials by sites and investigators could be increased by utilizing an integrated platform like COSMOS having accelerated and expanded enrollment and more streamlined processes.