CRO

Icon deepens adaptive trial work with patient-safety service

Irish CRO Icon ($ICLR) is riding the spike in demand for adaptive trial monitoring, unveiling a new service that parses study data and highlights potential safety issues in real time.

Dubbed Iconik Patient Safety, the CRO's latest offering can trudge through accumulating study results and spot flare-ups in risk, allowing sponsors to make data-driven decisions mid-trial. The service wipes out the need for time-consuming reviews of individual patient files and allows researchers to take a broad view of study populations before weighing in on possible safety problems, the company said.

"Iconik Patient Safety helps study teams maintain a view of a drug's evolving safety profile by accumulating safety data in real-time and allowing for quick identification of emerging safety issues, affording greater protection of patients' well-being," Senior Vice President Peter Schueler said. "Before Iconik Patient Safety, this level of dynamic analysis and management of patient safety was simply not possible."

The latest launch dovetails with Icon's August introduction of Iconik Monitoring, a risk-based monitoring platform that allows sponsors to prioritize site visits by looking at risk profiles in real time. Both offerings conform to FDA and EMA guidances while meeting the standards set forth by Big Pharma supergroup TransCelerate BioPharma, according to the company.

Large-scale drug developers are warming up to the idea of risk-based monitoring, but doing it on their own would require a large up-front cost to acquire the necessary technology. CROs, however, are happy to endure the investment in exchange for partnerships, and Icon joins industry heavyweights like Quintiles ($Q), INC Research and PRA in the adaptive trial world.

- read the announcement