Farmaindustria bets on digitization to consolidate Spain in drug trials
In the workshop “Digital challenges in the management of clinical trials”, organized by Farmaindustria, its attendees have shown their commitment to digitization to help Spain consolidate its international position in clinical drug research.
Spain is an international reference for conducting clinical trials of new drugs, as shown in the research effort deployed to deal with the current coronavirus pandemic: it is the first European country and the fourth in the world in number of tests against the virus. “Precisely, the experience accumulated during these months has led to the application of digitization to these processes having undergone a strong acceleration”, highlights the employers of the national pharmaceutical industry.
“The impossibility of traveling to hospitals during the pandemic led to the activation of new processes, such as the electronic signature of research contracts, visits to start the trials virtually or the possibility of remote monitoring of the trials verifying the source data, together with the sending of the medication to the home of the participants in a trial ”, explained Amelia Martín, who is responsible for the Platform of Innovative Medicines of Farmaindustria.
“Many of these processes have come to stay and others will be incorporated as a complement or an alternative in many hospitals. Everything that we can implement that avoids the displacement of patients with guarantees from the point of view of the confidentiality of their data will be a great advance both now and later ”, added Amelia Martín.
Efficiency in testing
“With these advances in digitization, the fundamental thing at this time is that all the agents involved in this field – healthcare professionals, researchers and managers of hospitals and public and private centers, together with pharmaceutical companies – can be trained in these new tools and digital skills with the aim of increasing efficiency in the tests ”, highlighted this spokesperson for said employer’s association.
For this reason, this workshop was held online, in which more than 340 professionals from hospitals and research centers participated, as well as from the pharmaceutical industry, all of them adhered to the BEST Project, a program promoted by Farmaindustria to make Spain “a country of excellence in research and improve in key areas”, such as start-up times and patient recruitment, one of the aspects where there is a greater capacity for progression.
In this webinar, other issues were discussed, such as electronic informed consent, an area in which the need to create an interdisciplinary working group among different actors – regulatory agencies, promoters, researchers, CEIm members and patients – was highlighted in order to “advance in an area of ??the future that, without a doubt, has to bring added value to patients ”.
