One thing I wish everyone knew about clinical trials is that it is a crucial step in the road for improving patients’ lives.
My full name is Shoshana Friedman – Shoshana is a rose, but everyone knows me as Shoshi.
I am the Head of Global Clinical Operations in the specialty R&D at Teva. We are responsible for the planning and execution of all patient clinical studies. The aim of patients' clinical studies is to prove both safety and efficacy of the new drugs.
The three trends that I am interested in are:
Incorporating remote elements into our clinical studies
Establishing our patient diversity strategy and
Bridging between the clinical and the tech worlds
The first trend that I'm interested in is incorporating remote elements into our clinical studies. Our industry has been relatively conservative for decades in terms of patients must attend physically in each visit of the study, in person, and that can last for hours each time.
70% of the US population live more than a two hour drive from clinical centers. COVID introduced us to a different way of living in a way, that you can be remote and still stay connected. We all got used to Zoom and Teams' meetings and this can also be introduced in clinical studies. So what we're trying to do is to incorporate the remote elements, including telemedicine, home visits, and even bringing the study medication to patients' homes.
And that will help in the treatment, will help to accomplish the study faster if more patients will be involved, and to bring the study drug to patients overall sooner.
The second trend is building up Teva patient diversity strategy. The benefit for Teva to have a more diverse population in our clinical studies will allow us to gain more information about the new drug, we will know more about it from various types of populations and as many patients that we want to use the drug, it will be beneficial for us because we will reach out to more patients.
The third element is bridging between the clinical and the tech world.
The two elements that we have spoken about, the remote data, the remote elements of clinical trials and reaching out to a more diverse population, all those will require and do require tools and solution technologies. By our tech people understanding those needs and the background and the language better, they will be able to create for us better solutions, assisting us in accomplishing our clinical studies faster and bringing the new drugs to the market earlier.
