New technology aims to improve diversity in clinical trials

Diversity

Medidata has launched the Intelligent Trials Diversity Module to help improve the equity of clinical trials.

The module will provide site-level participant demographic data including race, sex, age, and ethnicity. 

The new Intelligent Trials Diversity Module will help sponsors identify sites that are more successful at enrolling diverse patients. This insight will help bring diversity into the beginning of the feasibility process, all while accelerating trials.

Historically, clinical trials have been shown to recruit disproportionately white participants, which raises concerns about the generalisability of trial results to underrepresented patients. Medidata research shows that in the past decade 70% of sites did not enroll a single Black participant in Alzheimer’s and lung cancer trials, two diseases that disproportionately affect Black Americans.

“Powering greater diversity is critical for our industry and a priority for Medidata. With this new offering, it is now possible to identify high-performing sites known to recruit diverse patients. This supports more representative outcomes, and promotes much needed equity within clinical research,” said Fareed Melhem, Senior Vice President, Medidata AI. 

“By providing our standardised and analysis-ready demographic and operational data in a study’s planning stages, sponsors and CROs can optimise planning and diversity performance from the start.”

The new offering supports the FDA call to action for the enrollment of more participants from underrepresented racial and ethnic populations in the US into clinical trials. Legislation like the Diverse and Equitable Participation in Clinical Trials (DEPICT) Act has also highlighted this critical issue.

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