Ro has signed a partnership with the National Institutes of Health to use the digital health startup’s telehealth platform to screen and recruit patients for the agency’s clinical trials.
The agreement will support efforts by the NIH's National Institute on Aging to establish the Registry for Equal Access to Clinical Trials in Alzheimer's Disease.
A big part of the recruiting effort is to identify patients with Alzheimer’s and related dementias from minority communities, who have been disproportionately affected by the disease, the company said in an Oct. 6 press release. More than 6 million people in the U.S. live with the disease, which ranks as the seventh leading cause of death in the country.
“Ro's platform was built to advance access to innovative treatments and high-quality care for patients regardless of demographic, insurance coverage or zip code, and we are excited to do the same for clinical research,” Ro CEO Zachariah Reitano said in the release.
Starting this month, Ro will kick off a feasibility study focused on patients between the ages of 48 to 65 years who are at risk of developing Alzheimer’s or related dementias and live within a 50-mile radius of NIA clinics in Baltimore and Bethesda, Maryland. Selected participants will have the option of using Ro’s platform, which collects relevant, structured information including family history of Alzheimer’s, as well as offering an online cognitive test developed by the Translational Genomics Research Institute's MindCrowd project.
Direct-to-patient healthcare company Ro announced earlier this year it would add an online and mobile platform to give patients access to all of the company’s offerings, addressing mental health, women’s health, men’s health, fertility, metabolic health and skincare.