Thursday, 23 June 2016

Integrated Clinical Hub – bringing data together

1.  Abstract

Since inception Clinical world has become an ocean of data originating from all possible sources. With increased complications in medical industry the demand of precise medicines and devices are increasing. The clinical databases has become advanced and comes with feasibility of collecting and mapping of data from any sources. However, the increase source data has lead to complex integrations and requires ample storage space.
The biggest issue in current industry is to how bring all data together to run analytics and business intelligence. The concept of having a hub is as important as having a clinical database for a study. Integrating the hub by having all clinical data at one place makes analytics to run seamlessly and precisely.

2.    Introduction

Integrated clinical hub is a concept of having a central repository of data from various clinical and non-clinical sources. The data to be either integrated online or imported offline based on the study configuration and frequency. The hub helps in identifying any datapoint or event or patient history at one go without referring to multiple databases.
Clinical analytics would be an ease using integrated clinical hub and results would be acceptable being run on a vast data. The hub used could be a clinical database or some platform similar to it.

3.    History

Since inception of CDM business by in-house teams and outsourcing from various vendors, the amount of data and it’s sources are getting increased. For any given study information on patient/ subject is generated at site level as well as through IoTs. Information from eCRF and non-eCRF sources are very important to be captured, stored and analysed at one place. Analytics driven trials were only based on clinical data coming from study sites, however now a days increased outsourcing has given importance to the CROs and IT/ BPO organisations. Hence, the need of time is a single efficient repository for all clinical trial data for analysis and further review.

4.    Intended Users


There are multiple industry challenges at both sponsor and IT solutions end, they are:
·         Sponsor/ CRO
o   Difficult to integrate multiple sources of data
o   Multiple source data formats
o   Data Integrity Issue (Restrictions required for different groups)
o   High-cost solution
o   Ample IT dependency
·         IT
o   Complex setup of external data source integration
o   Availability and setup of on-line tool
o   Ample rework for every new study
o   High maintenance of existing systems
o   Complex solutions/ systems for simple tasks

6.    High level Data Flow

 7.    Conclusion

The integrated clinical hub is regulated by a centralised repository intended for archival, processing, categorising, analysing and reporting of clinical data, hence this serves as a one stop solution for analytics and reporting. The use of integrated clinical hub would save time and provide clear idea of study data and reporting.
With the help of online and offline feature to integrate source data, the hub becomes a handy platform to use with a minimal costing. Moreover, the plugins for external analytical systems, e.g., SAS, tableau, MS power BI, spotfire is an add-on. As the integrated clinical hub is able to produce extracts in different formats, hence using them for different intents by different tools is not a problem.

8.    Abbreviation

SAS
Statistical Analytical System
IT
Information Technology
CRO
Clinical Research Organization
CRF
Case Report Form
eCRF
Electronic Case Report Form
IoTs
Internet of Things

No comments:

Post a Comment