Keeping up with what’s going on in the industry can be a bit of a headache; there are new studies coming out every day and new initiatives launching all the time. Don’t stress, we’ve neatly chunked together 3 of the most interesting and useful stories from the last month – so you don’t have to! This month we take a look at the five recommendations made for the clinical trials industry around using mobile health apps and devices as a method for outcome data collection. We also hear how evidence about effectiveness gathered from the real world could offer new hope for reversing the opioid crisis. Lastly, we finish with Real-World Evidence presented by Teva Pharmaceuticals.
Report: Five ways to bolster real-world evidence from mobile devices
By Jonah Comstock for MobiHealthNews
One of the biggest promises of mobile health apps and wearables is the sheer amount of data they collect. As that dataset grows, a number of different stakeholders are taking an interest in it, among them patients themselves, doctors, and clinical researchers. The latter is the focus of a new report out from the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy. In the report, the Center presents five recommendations for the industry around using mobile health apps and devices in clinical trials.
Teva Pharmaceuticals this month announced data from a real-world evidence study.
The data showed that in patients with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), DuoResp Spiromax®(budesonide/formoterol fumarate dihydrate) was non-inferior to Symbicort Turbuhaler® (budesonide/formoterol fumarate dihydrate) in regards to disease control. DuoResp Spiromax® aims to reduce common inhaler errors and enhance usability for patients with asthma and COPD, delivering medication via a breath-activated, multi-dose dry powder inhaler. The study was presented at the 2017 European Respiratory Society International Congress in Milan, Italy, the largest respiratory conference in the world.
Evidence about effectiveness offers hope for reversing opioid crisis
By Joe Selby & Sherry Dubester for Morning Consult
The impact of the opioid crisis can be measured in many ways, such as the fourfold increase in the number of opioid-related deaths nationally since 1999, including more than 33,000 lives lost in 2015, or in the $42 billion in lost productivity associated with opioid use disorders. Comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER) is health research expressly aimed at answering practical, real-world questions, and it will now be used to tackle the opioid crisis. This patient-centred research aims to produce real-world evidence that is immediately relevant to those on the frontlines of the opioid crisis who are making potentially life-changing decisions about which prevention and treatment strategies to use and which policies to enact.