Ochsner Health System, Louisiana’s largest non-profit academic healthcare system, and Pfizer Inc PFE, -0.14% have entered into a multi-year strategic alliance to develop innovative models for clinical trials. Through this partnership, Pfizer and Ochsner — through its innovation lab, innovationOchsner (iO), in partnership with Ochsner Research — will explore ways to enhance the clinical trial experience and ease participation in clinical research for both patients and healthcare professionals.
The alliance aims to create faster, improved access and connectivity to clinical trials for patients, with the ultimate goal of better experiences and outcomes. Participating patients will have the opportunity to test out new digital tools designed to make the clinical trial experience more inclusive and enjoyable. Participating clinicians will benefit from reduced manual data entry as a result of direct data system integration and automated study conduct tools, freeing up time and work to allow them to offer clinical research as an option to a broader range of patients. And research groups will experience efficiencies from interoperability that may lower costs while increasing capacity. These projects are designed to ensure that all data collected is secure and will only be used with patient consent, as in any clinical trial.
“As a national leader in healthcare, Ochsner is delivering on its mission to bring the most innovative ideas to our patients. We are relentless about using the latest breakthroughs in science and technology to solve some of the toughest healthcare challenges,” said Dr. Richard Milani, Ochsner’s Chief Clinical Transformation Officer and Medical Director of iO. “Partnering with Pfizer allows us to transform medicine by creating a digital clinical trial experience that improves patient participation, integration, communication and accessibility.”
The strategic alliance’s first project began with a “proof of value” phase in which researchers successfully transferred mock data (e.g. no actual patient data was used or shared) from Ochsner’s EHR system to Pfizer’s electronic data capture system used in Pfizer clinical trials. The experiment aimed at understanding the gaps and variances between data collected in electronic health records and patient-reported data from clinical trials.
