Healthcare IT platform provider Allscripts has partnered with Elligo Health Research to help improve clinical trial enrollment by helping physicians conduct clinical studies in their own clinics.
The collaboration is based on the Allscripts eParticipate service, which allows research-capable users of Allscripts’ electronic health record platforms—Allscripts Professional EHR, Allscripts TouchWorks EHR and Allscripts Sunrise—to become study investigators through Elligo’s infrastructure and services.
Here’s how it works: Patients are identified through Allscripts’ EHR systems, and after physicians discuss trial opportunities with patients and agree to participate in a clinical study, Elligo helps physicians set up studies in their own shops.
“[Low patient recruitment rate] is due to the increasing complexity of inclusion/exclusion criteria for trials, causing fewer patients to be eligible for a trial, and, the increasing distance between clinical research and clinical healthcare,” Elligo Co-Founder and President Chad Moore said during an interview with FierceCRO back in January.
While there definitely are enough patients available to fill a trial, “the problem is how to access and provide convenient opportunities for those patients to participate in research,” Moore said at that time. “The current emphasis has been to move patients from clinical healthcare into a clinical research setting. We believe many of the problems associated with patient recruitment and study efficiency and cost stem from the continued separation of clinical research and clinical practice of medicine.”
RELATED: Low clinical trial recruitment rates have poor physician communication to blame: report
In Elligo’s approach, instead of referring patients to a research center, it brings clinical trials to physicians. Through this model, patients can gain access to new treatments while staying with the physicians and facilities with which they’re familiar and feel comfortable.
“[P]hysicians can remain focused on the direct care of patients while offering them new therapies,” Allscripts SVP and GM of payer and life sciences Jay Bhattacharyya said in a statement. “Physicians will be able to participate in the benefits of clinical research without investing in expensive infrastructure.”
Elligo in June reached a deal with also Austin, Texas-based Consortia Health, making its services available to the latter’s network of women’s health provider partners. The Allscripts partnership is more inclusive, spanning several therapeutic areas, including gastroenterology, neurology, pain, urology, pulmonology, oncology and women’s health.
Chicago-based Allscripts has also been expanding its reach. Earlier this month, it announced the $185 million all-cash acquisition of McKesson Corporation’s hospital and health system IT business, Enterprise Information Solutions, which has its own EHR solution called Paragon.