Clinical Trials

Aug12017 by Pharmaceutical TechNo Comments

Would Virtual Clinical Trials Work?

Further into the future, clinical trials to test the efficacy of new drugs would not require the test subject physically traveling to a clinical research facility or hospital. Mobile devices – smart phones, watches or glasses with inbuilt wearable sensors – would be enough to connect one to the clinical research study and report general information and adverse events. These sensors would record data such as body temperature and blood glucose levels, which would be sent to the Electronic Data Capture (EDC) record. The clinician would then visit the subject at home for drug administration and follow-up. One could even postpone or pre-pone the visit using automated reminders in their devices but within a time frame permitted by the study protocol. The future of pharmaceutic...

Mar152017 by Pharmaceutical TechNo Comments

Genomic Personalized Medicine

Clinical Trials, Cure & Prevention

Diagnostics and prognoses are done based on set standards in Medicine. These standards include symptoms. Any two persons sharing similar symptoms can carry the same kinds of diseases or afflicted with the same disorders. But a question always looms when diagnostics (or prognoses) fail – the two persons share similar symptoms and have been given the same medicines and dosage; what could have gone wrong? Quite logically, the physician runs another trial based on their expertise, or simply recommends another doctor. But the revolutionary research going on in the field of the human genome and the recent startling finding that a person’s biological future (future diseases, life span, etc.) can be mapped using the human DNA. This is being referred as “personalized medicine” or genom...

Oct282016 by Pharmaceutical TechNo Comments

George Clinical harnessing innovation to improve patient retention in clinical trials

Clinical Trials

George Clinical’s parent organisation, The George Institute for Global Health and its TEXTCARE application, has been named a top 10 finalist in this year’s Google Impact Challenge. With a top prize of AUD $750,000, The George Institute has the opportunity to use its proven text messaging platform to tackle chronic disease on a global scale. “An SMS has the power to save millions of lives,” Professor Clara Chow, Director of the George Institute’s Cardiovascular Division and one of George Clinical’s Scientific Leaders said following the nomination. “We have over five years of evidence to prove that this method of communication with patients can have a long-lasting impact on their lifestyle and their adherence to medication. As such, TEXTCARE has the potential to significantly improve a pati...

Apr192016 by Pharmaceutical TechNo Comments

Clinical Trials on tissues of human heart now possible in UK

Biotechnology, Clinical Trials, Drug Development, Pharmaceutical Research and Development

A UK based new start-up is developing a unique method for testing out the impact of drugs on the cardio-vascular system without resorting to animal testing or through clinical trials of an early-stage human. The company we are talking about is Inocardia, a spin-out from the University of Coventry. Having attracted sufficient funding from the Mercia Fund Management, this organization is still in the process of shaping up the model and commercializing their line of business. The model that they use takes up samples of the human heart attached to a rig. The cardiac tissue is elongated and contracted through electric impulse stimulation so as to mimic a working human heart.Drugs to be trialed are then administered to the tissue to keep a track of adverse effects – a test that could have been...

Feb252016 by Pharmaceutical TechNo Comments

Clinical Research: Ethical or Unethical?

Clinical Trials, Drug Development, Pharmaceutical Excipients and Drug Formulation, Pharmaceutical Research and Development

Everybody believes that informed consent makes clinical research ethical. However, informed consent is neither necessary nor sufficient for ethical clinical research. Drawing on the basic philosophies underlying major codes, declarations, and other documents relevant to research with human subjects, The aspects which make Clinical Research Ethical: Value: enhancements of health or knowledge must be derived from the research; Scientific validity: the research must be methodologically rigorous. Fair subject selection: scientific objectives, not vulnerability or privilege, and the potential for and distribution of risks and benefits, should determine communities selected as study sites and the inclusion criteria for individual subjects. Favorable risk-benefit ratio: withi...