Covance's new regulatory service to help biopharma companies understand how to get the best out of mobile apps in the clinical trial space goes live this week.
The New Jersey-based CRO has launched "Mobile Health Solutions"--a digital service designed to help biopharma and tech companies steer their way through the rapidly evolving mobile health landscape.
The new offering provides regulatory consulting and validation services to help companies work out how to get the best out of mobile devices and apps for use in clinical trials, and which systems they can ditch.
"Mobile technology is changing the way patients interact with their healthcare providers, and clinical trials must adapt as well," said Deborah Keller, CEO of Covance. "Covance has the expertise and scale to help our partners evaluate which apps and devices will be most effective, will generate the most consistent and reliable data and will be easy for patients to use."
Mobile health devices and apps can be used in a variety of ways to help better patient access, produce data measurements and generate more powerful data analytic--all of which help increase the efficacy of clinical research.
However, some companies are wary of using new digital tech and mobile data because they are still largely unknown entities with regulatory guidelines being created almost weekly to keep up.
What Covance hopes to do with its new service is to help its clients determine the best pathways for mobile health validation, registration and approval for use in clinical trials. In a statement, the firm said it will do this using its "network of early phase development clinics provides necessary environmental controls and robust biometric analysis to drive reliable device and app validation."
Keller added: "Our Mobile Health Solutions support our strategic vision to improve health and improve lives through the use of technology-enabled solutions that enhance the drug-development process and can reduce the time and cost of trials."
- read Covance's release here