PPD expands patient access to clinical trials via collaboration with cancer center

16-Jul-2019 - Last updated on 16-Jul-2019 at 15:13 GMT

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PPD’s patient enrollment business expands access to cancer patients treated in the community setting as part of a new collaboration with a hospital and outpatient center network.

PPD’s Accelerated Enrollment Solutions (AES) business unit is collaborating with the Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) to deploy its Optimal Just-in-Time (JIT) patient recruitment methodology at CTCA managed sites.

“Just-in-Time is an innovative methodology through which we expand clinical trial access to the more than 85% of US cancer patients who are treated in the community setting,” said Krystyna Kowalczyk, chief operating officer for Optimal service offerings.

The collaboration is focused on providing local care, cross-specialty patient services, and access to clinical trials through the patient’s local treating physician, she told us.

Kowalczyk said the goal is “to allow the patient and physician to make choices that are not dependent upon where a patient lives.”

“We already have seen an increase in minority access to trials through our collaboration with CTCA and hope to make this type of access the new ‘norm’ for cancer patients across the country,” she said.

According to the company, the JIT approach identifies patients first before sites are activated, which results in zero non-enrolling sites.

PPD earlier this month announced that AES will be supporting clinical trial enrollment of participants in the Synexus HealthyMinds Registry (HMR), which aims to register 30,000 adults for a five-year study.

The collaboration initially aims to register 30,000 adults aged 50 or older in the US without signs of dementia for a five-year study that will examine lifestyle and genetic risk factors affecting cognitive function.