Interactive digital solution to engage patients and optimize data capture in clinical studies

Over het initiatief / About the initiative

Interactive digital solution to engage patients and optimize data capture in clinical studies

In welke fase zit jouw initiatief? / In what stage is your initiative?

Ideefase

Heb je jouw initiatief al gevalideerd? / Did you validate your initiative?

We live in a world where more and more diseases are emerging, thus, it is crucial that medications reach the patients faster. Patient data is key for the success of clinical trials. Now more than ever, clinical trials are required to focus on patient engagement to boost retention rates. Currently, the industry demand for innovative patient engagement tools is high. With the increasing number of decentralized clinical trials (DCTs), direct-to-patient (DTP) services are gaining favor with remote data collection via case report forms (CRFs). While this method has its own advantages, patient engagement is still not successful. Therefore, patients are missing more personal interactions and hence show decreasing compliance. 
 Currently, decentralized clinical trials rely heavily on clinical staff to engage patients. Some of these techniques are at-home visits and periodic phone calls, however these are not cost-efficient and create logistical difficulty with larger studies. Discussions with industry stakeholders validated the need for better tools to engage patients. Our solution is innovative because we are developing an intuitive data collection tool that engages patients in clinical trials with the goal to deliver better healthcare.

Meer informatie over jouw initiatief / More info about your initiative

Patients data is key for the success of clinical studies. However, 30% of patients dropout from clinical studies, leading to study delay and heavy financial costs. The bigger picture of this problem is that those dropouts cause delay for medication to get to the market. More and more diseases are emerging, so we need treatments to reach patients faster.

In Aletta Solutions, we develop a digital tool that boosts the patients’ retention numbers in clinical trials. We create an AI-powered, conversational chatbot that engages patients. We transform case report form (CRFs) into a chatbot conversation. Aletta collects data from the patients by conversing with them. In clinical trials, listening to and understanding the patients’ is important, and we do this by providing a human-like interaction. Our clients, clinical trial organizers, can customize the conversation by requesting additional features such as verbal empathy, encouragement, and memory to further increase engagement. By integrating these hallmarks, our chatbot has an added value compared to CRFs.

After the data is collected from the patients, we use AI to extract relevant features from the conversation, and we output these to the researcher. The impact our solution offers researchers is a convenient and efficient tool to gather and process richer data during their studies.

Wat zijn jouw volgende stappen om het verder te ontwikkelen? / What are your next steps to develop the initiative?

In the next 3 years we are developing further our chatbot, and we are setting up pilot studies to demonstrate that Aletta engages patients and collects and extracts data effectively and efficiently. Once we launch business, we plan to grow the number of patients through our customer segmentation strategy. We also need to increase our team to deliver quality services to our growing demand of clients.

Wat heb je nodig om (nog meer) impact te maken met dit initiatief? / What do you need to make (more) impact with this initiative?

Future mentors and coaches are essential for us to broaden our network. We are looking for more connections and feedback, that in turn will mean more prospects for our initiative. Finding partners who have our target audience and collaborating with them will improve our concept.