The Computational Health Informatics Program at Boston Children’s Hospital is running a study on hepatitis C, relying exclusively on Apple’s ResearchKit and a custom-designed iPhone app. This study, called C Tracker, will give researchers insight into patients’ daily activity, monitor symptoms and assess the efficacy of treatments.
“By and large, the data we have now about hepatitis C treatments come from traditional clinical trials,” Dr. Ken Mandl, director of CHIP and principal investigator of C Tracker, said in a press statement. “With C Tracker, we can listen to the patient voice to learn how people live with hepatitis in the real world.”
The study includes a free iOS app, also called C Tracker, and a platform called C3-PRO, which stands for Consent, Contact and Community framework for Patient-Reported Outcomes, to connect the hospital to patient data via ResearchKit. C3-PRO is compatible with any ResearchKit app, not just C-Tracker, according to the hospital.
Mandl said that the app will turn “research participation into a patient-driven, democratic endeavor,” largely due to its ResearchKit compatibility.
“Traditional clinical trials are plagued by abysmal accrual rates, slowing progress in discovering cures,” Mandl said. “We foresee a future where ResearchKit apps like C Tracker lower the barrier to participation and speed medical progress.”
Though the program is from a pediatric hospital, participants must be at least 18 years old.
For more, watch this video from Boston Children’s.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Photo: Flickr user Health Gauge
