Digital health: A day in the life of a clinical investigator

In this audio presentation, Bain partner Patrick O'Hagan discusses how digital health technologies will affect the life of a clinical investigator. 

Digital health won’t just transform the back office. It will change the daily lives of people throughout the healthcare system—from doctors, nurses and clinical investigators to patients, including both the seriously ill and the very healthy. 

Presentation transcript: A day in the life of a clinical investigator

Slide 1. Digital health: Clinical investigator

Hi. I’m Patrick O’Hagan. I’m a partner in our Healthcare practice based in the Boston office, and I just want to take a few minutes to talk to you about digital health and its transformational impact on clinical investigators.

Slide 2. The busy life of a clinical investigator

What’s unique for investigators is that they have a very busy life. What they’re doing is balancing care, both for their patients, who participate in their daily practice, but also the patients who are participating in clinical trials. As a result of that, they’re doing a lot of juggling and bouncing back and forth in the delivery of care throughout the day. So today, we’re going to talk about how digital health can help that investigator better balance their time and deliver care in a more high-impact and efficient manner.

Slide 3. A day in the life of the clinical trials investigator

Let’s start by taking a look at a day in the life of the clinical trials investigator. Now, no two days are the same for an investigator, but what follows is a reasonable description of what a day in the life might look like. And what you’ll notice is that digital health can have a transformational impact on that day. For example, remote monitoring allows the investigator to learn information about their patients in the trail and communicate with them, as well as potentially the hospital and the investigational review board—even the regulatory bodies, as needed, if there were adverse events. Other technologies can come into play. For example, videoconferencing and email. All of these digital health technologies allow the investigator to get their work done faster and in a more high-quality way and actually fit that activity into a very tight schedule, where they’re also seeing their patients in their practice. That gives you an overview of how digital health impacts their day. Let’s dive deeper now into each of these aspects and see how it plays out.

Slide 4. Remote monitoring of trial participants

Let’s start by looking at the morning for the investigator. The investigator might grab a cup of coffee; remote monitoring allows the investigator to look at report on their individual patients in the trial. They might also access a social media feed and see what issues are trending in that trial. The combination of this information could allow them to identify issues early. For example, if motivation or other concerns are being flagged on the trial, they potentially then can intervene early, proactively, and reduce dropout rates in the trail, saving up to $6,000 per dropout.

Slide 5. Communicates trials data with IRB and FDA

In turn, the investigator—in this case, Dr. John—can leverage the power of data mining to access information about their patients. For example, he might find that an adverse event has occurred and then quickly report this information to the IRB as well as to the FDA. Or, in the case of his running an oncology trial, he might pull up and share interim data from that trial with the FDA. In these cases, the power of data mining is allowing Dr. John to capture the information and report it more quickly, thus increasing the rate of reporting on that adverse event, for example, and speeding the time to decision making by the IRB and the FDA.

Slide 6. Sends targeted educational materials

We all know that marketers are using digital technology today to segment their customers and deliver highly tailored information. In healthcare, it will end up being no different. So, in this case, Dr. John can use digital health technology to segment his patient population to send information to patients in the appropriate age group or to patients, for example, who are not complying with the trial and help motivate them to participate at the appropriate level. Or he might try a new message on a sample of patients to gauge their reaction, refine the message and distribute it to a whole population of patients.

Slide 7. Collaboration with other investigators

One of the challenges of the clinical trial is that it’s spread across multiple sites. Today, already in our business lives and personal lives, we’re using digital technology to communicate with colleagues and friends and family. In the future, healthcare will be the same. The investigator can collaborate with his colleagues through videoconferencing and real-time collaboration where they look at data and identify trends and work together to find solutions through the trial.

Slide 8. Video chat with trial participant

Just as Dr. John uses his videoconferencing to collaborate with his colleagues, he can also engage more directly and personally with his patients. In this case, the patient is wearing a remote monitor, and the algorithm identifies a potential issue and flags it for Dr. John. For videoconferencing, Dr. John talks with the patient, better understands the issue and analyzes the real-time data. He is actually able to resolve it remotely. As a result, this technology has save the time and the hardship for that patient of having to come into the hospital and do a visit live with Dr. John.

Slide 9. Checks on potentially non-compliant participants

Unlike the prior patient, who was highly engaged in the trial, Dr. John also struggles with the issue of patients who are non-compliant. Here, again, digital technology can help. For example, the pill bottle connected to the Internet can alert Dr. John on his phone that the patient has actually not opened and taken his pill. In this case, Dr. John can actually follow up with the patient, alert him about the non-compliance, and even a nurse can do a follow-up video chat a couple of hours later if the problem hasn’t been resolved. This can result in significant improvement in adherence to the clinical trial, potentially going from 50% up to as high as 95%.

Slide 10. Signs on as investigator for new project

Finally, Dr. John closes his day by conducting an online meeting with a sponsor for a new trial, who identified him through a physician social network. Once he is signed up, the sponsor sends information on potential participants it has identified through social networks, advocacy groups and payers.

Slide 11. By 2020, digital health will have cut costs and increased innovation

So digital health can greatly improve life for Dr. John as well as lower the costs and improve the quality of clinical trials. For example, it can lead to efficiency improvements, marked by a 65% reduction in time to recruit patients, it can improve the quality and availability of clinical data, and it can lead to much greater consumer engagement. For example, resulting in significant reduction in dropout rates for trial participants.

Slide 12. Contact us

If you’d like to learn more about how digital health can improve your healthcare business, please don’t hesitate to contact me or any of my colleagues in Bain & Company’s Healthcare practice. Thanks for listening.