Health IT, BioPharma

IQVIA creates online Covid-19 clinical trial matching system

The website is designed to use the life sciences data analytics firm's own technology and algorithms, along with publicly available trial information, to match patients and physicians with clinical trials of treatments and vaccines for the disease.

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A large life sciences analytics company has created an online web portal designed to help people find clinical trials for Covid-19.

Danbury, Connecticut-based IQVIA said Monday that it had launched the Covid-19 Trial Matching Tool, which is designed to help match individual patients with specific clinical trials in the disease, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

“In response to this unprecedented crisis, IQVIA has created the first comprehensive online screener and trial matching tool for all U.S. Covid-19 trials,” IQVIA president for research and development solutions Richard Staub said in a statement. “This sponsor-agnostic solution will accelerate Phase I-IV clinical research trials when they are most needed by connecting users to Covid-19 investigators working tirelessly to discover and develop treatments against this disease.”

The website uses publicly available information about Covid-19 clinical trials, IQVIA’s own technology and an algorithm-based questionnaire. Patients and healthcare providers are asked a series of questions about age, whether they are hospitalized, whether they are on a ventilator, what medications they are taking for other disease states and the like.

The ClinicalTrials.gov database currently lists 25 clinical studies that are testing drugs or vaccines against Covid-19 or collecting other data on patients with the disease and already recruiting participants. Another 27 studies are listed on the site but not yet recruiting. Overall, there are 366 studies worldwide, including those that are open for recruitment, not yet open or that have already completed enrollment. Of the trials underway or soon to be around the world, 60 are being sponsored by the biopharma industry, while the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies are listed as sponsors on five.

Several other drugs are in preclinical development for Covid-19 and expected to enter the clinic in the coming months. On Monday, British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline announced a partnership with San Francisco-based Vir Biotechnology that includes a $250 million equity investment and will initially focus on two investigational drug candidates to treat Covid-19. Other treatments or vaccines in clinical trials include Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Sanofi’s Kevzara (sarilumab), Gilead Sciences’ remdesivir, Moderna’s vaccine mRNA-1273, Incyte and Novartis’ Jakafi (ruxolitinib) and Roche’s Actemra (tocilizumab), among others.

Photo: FotografiaBasica, Getty Images

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