Mobile technology facilitates decentralized skin and wound trials
Dermatological care and clinical research frequently require the capture of images related to a patient’s condition, but with COVID-19 and other factors making travel to and from a medical facility a problem, a remote, patient-centric solution could help. Carlos Perez, CEO and cofounder of Swift Medical, describes its artificial intelligence (AI) powered platform, and how the company’s technology serves to elevate image capture and management in dermatological trials.
OSP: Could you please share an overview of Swift Medical—who you are, what you do, key specialties, and what sets you apart.
CP: Swift Medical is the global leader in digital skin and wound management technology. Our AI-powered, digital platform allows patients and clinicians to easily capture, track and analyze high-precision images of skin or wound conditions with any smartphone camera.
Swift Medical’s technology is used by more than 4,000 healthcare organizations internationally, including health systems and providers across the continuum, academic institutions, research organizations, and pharmaceutical companies. Swift Medical is the only wound management solution with clinically validated reliability and accuracy.
OSP: Could you please describe Swift Skin and Wound—how does it work, and what advantages does this tech offer over more conventional solutions?
CP: Swift Skin and Wound makes capturing accurate wound care information as easy as taking a photo and can be deployed on iOS or Android devices without the use of external hardware. Swift offers significant advantages in wound management.
Color, size, and shape calibration is supported by HealX, Swift’s proprietary fiducial marker. HealX is the only FDA-registered fiducial marker available on the market. HealX ensures that image capture is standardized regardless of image taker, environment, or lighting.
Swift Skin and Wound autonomously determines clinical characteristics, tracks disease progression, enables remote communication, and securely shares patient data in real-time. Peer-reviewed studies have shown both significant improvements in the accuracy of wound measurement, as well as significant reductions in time compared to traditional methods of using a paper ruler for wound assessments.
OSP: Then, please tell us about how Skin and Wound might be put to use in trials, especially decentralized studies. Does it require a home-health nurse or other trained pros or can the patient self-scan?
CP: While Swift Skin and Wound was designed for supporting wound healing Swift Scientific is our new purpose-built platform to support decentralized clinical trials for any type of dermatological or skin-related study. The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impeded clinical trials, making participant recruitment, monitoring, and retention more difficult and resulting in more expensive, delayed, and sometimes canceled clinical trials.
Swift Scientific is able to support clinical trials across multiple sites, whether in the clinic or the participant’s home, with a mobile application that eliminates the need for expensive equipment or extended travel. Taking measurements is simple and intuitive and can be taken by either a clinician or patient depending on the study protocols.
Swift Scientific has been built so that patients or caregivers with no medical background can easily capture images for skin assessments; simply open the app, point, and shoot. Researchers are then able to analyze images and data in real-time, from any remote location.
One of the major advantages of Swift Scientific is the support services we offer. We work alongside both study sponsors and CROs to design the technology configuration for a given study protocol and have a dedicated team to support asynchronous, multi-site studies.
We can also work with partners to help create the training material for the participants that goes through IRB approval as well as all the training material for the sites, trial managers, and monitors to ensure our tech is being used to its full potential. Another advantage of using Swift Scientific is that all data is available for regular export into whatever repositories are required, including all relevant metadata.
OSP: Do you have any partnerships with CROs or other medical organizations you could tell us about?
CP: To date, Swift Scientific has been adopted at more than 50 sites in both North America and Europe with some of the largest pharmaceutical organizations in the world.
OSP: What’s next for your company—do you have any interesting new tech on the horizon or any other announcement you’d like to share?
CP: We have some very exciting announcements lined up in the coming months, including some that will directly augment and enhance the capabilities of Swift Scientific. Stay tuned!
