I hope you and your family are well and safe during this time of the COVID crisis.
With the rapid spread of COVID-19 all over the world, Algorics have been focused on ensuring our staff and their families are safe and that we are able to continue supporting our customers without disruption.
This is an unprecedented situation which we never imagined. Our team is putting together a series of initiatives to support the clinical research industry during this crisis. We will be rolling them out in the coming weeks in form of knowledge sharing webinars
Economic market correction leaves limited funding for the biotech industry. The pace of funding will slow down but some deals may still get done around the discovery for COVID. All the M&As activity would be severely delayed, and IPOs will also be delayed.
Ongoing (active and recruiting) clinical trials heavily impacted due to patients unable to visit hospitals/ sites due to social distancing. Data pulled from www.clinicaltrials.gov data shows there are currently around 9250 industry-funded trials ongoing between Phase 1 to Phase 3.
Hospitals all over the world are overloaded with the treatment of COVID-19, research protocol becomes last priority
COVID19 protocols get all the attention which delays the timelines of other protocols which require regulatory assistance
On-site monitoring of clinical trials will be heavily impacted as CRAs are restrained due to travel restrictions
Remote monitoring of clinical trials will see further uptake, however, care should be taken such that it doesn’t cause additional burden to review operational checkpoints that require on-site assessment will be delayed until the situation improves in the next few months.
Ongoing trials will be adopting to use a decentralized approach to virtually connect with subjects, but it still has a limitation on home healthcare staff unable to visit patients. Remote physical examination or lab samples collection is also an ongoing challenge as subject movements are restricted.
Shipping and logistics in terms of direct to patient engagement will see increased adoption for delivering the study medication and collection of lab samples.
Remote assessment of medical imaging will continue to be a limitation for all studies involving imaging-based assessments like oncology, cardiovascular and Orthopedics, etc…
In our next blog, we will review the impact of ongoing trials conducted by top pharmaceutical companies, until then stay safe, stay connected.