The COVID-19 crisis requires all the Pharma companies to make the most use of the virtual platforms and technology we have against this disease. One of the businesses that are on ways to provide technology that accelerates the release of new treatments, new drugs to patients in the pharma industry is Embleema.
Robert Chu the CEO of Embleema, having 16 years of experience in IQVIA and IBM shared his views on the start-up added value to the pharma industry in an interview for The Future of Healthcare.
The first added value of Embleema is the focus on the patient, getting consent using the blockchain method to ensure clinical trials and research with proper consent.
Secondly, the evidence is provided to the pharmaceutical companies through a perpetual cohort of patients that provide the continuous outcomes including follow-up questions asked. It shows the whole lifecycle of outcomes from clinical trial to post-market of a particular drug that is studied.
This process makes research more efficient in terms of assessment of the drug’s effects strengthening the Pharmaceutical company’s Research. This efficient use of technology in research is likely to help a great deal in medical research.
Embleema is also compliant with FDA and GDPR, in particular for patient consent. Every data element is tracked so that patients can verify at any time who browsed the data and which algorithm was run on the data.
From a regulatory standpoint, because precision medicine involves genomic data and its inherent complexities, the FDA runs an independent analysis of the submitted data. So they take raw sequences, they run the algorithm pipelines and try to reproduce the evidence using the HIVE platform.
Robert Chu claims that with the COVID-19 crisis, it is very important to use virtual platforms for conducting researches. The researchers are also halted with regards to the COVID-19 but it is very crucial for the future to work on those diseases. So, the company initiated a skin disease virtual study. The data is collected first hand from the patients through virtual platforms like apps and can be extensively monitored. Further, the patient is the active participant in this whole process of responding to surveys, consolidating his electronic medical records, connected devices, and genomic data. Every process involves them as an active participant.
The Pharmaceutical industry in the coming months is also likely to show more interest in certain fields as to the prevailing conditions of COVID-19. According to Robert Chu, virtual studies are one of the basic priorities to continue the research in Pharma, collecting data virtually and carrying out the virtual researches will likely increase. The testing efforts and mechanisms are also to be redefined as the vigorous testing and confinement are two solutions to this COVID-19 crisis. Testing information is going to be crucial for tackling this outbreak. The patients will be allowed more involvement in the medical procedure encouraging an overall interest by patients on their medical conditions.
