Digital wound care company Swift Medical launched Swift Scientific, a digital imaging platform to support decentralized clinical trials.

The platform allows for large-scale image collection and management so researchers can monitor the effects of medical interventions at a multisite trial or from study participants' homes.

Swift’s product, Swift Skin and Wound, is an AI-enabled platform that lets patients or providers capture high-precision images of skin conditions or injuries with a smartphone. It tracks disease progression and healing, and allows for remote communication and data sharing.

“Organizations conducting and managing clinical trials are facing unprecedented challenges caused by the pandemic, yet their research is needed now more than ever.

We’ve already proven that the Swift Medical platform can be a trusted solution for producing clinical-quality images, but now we see an opportunity to help researchers develop life-saving treatments in a faster, more efficient manner,” Carlo Perez, cofounder and CEO of Swift Medical, said in a statement.

“Even after the pandemic, decentralized clinical trials represent the future for medical research, giving applications like Swift Scientific unlimited potential to power the next generation of data collection and analysis.”

WHY IT MATTERS

The COVID-19 pandemic created major barriers to recruiting clinical trial participants and conducting research. According to a brief published in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, there was a decrease of almost 80% in new patients entering trials per site in April 2020, compared with the year prior. 

Decentralized clinical trials were gaining traction before the pandemic, but COVID-19 pushed researchers to invest in remote tools to continue their studies, said John Reites, CEO and cofounder of THREAD Research.

“When the pandemic hit, what happened was the benefits that decentralized trials had to offer became a necessity in a world that couldn't do a visit otherwise,” Reites told HIMSSCast.

THE LARGER TREND

In July, Swift Medical announced it had raised $35 million in Series B funding, building on an $11.6 million Series A round in 2018. 

The use of decentralized clinical trials may grow even after the pandemic has wound down. According to a survey of clinical trial professionals by Pharma Intelligence, 91% of respondents expected COVID-19 to push increased adoption of decentralized trials in the long term.

Other companies providing decentralized clinical trial platforms include Castor, Florence, and Hawthorne Effect.

Last month, Alphabet’s life and sciences arm Verily acquired clinical trial management developer SignalPath, which could enable Verily to build out Baseline, its clinical trial platform, with technology for decentralized and hybrid trials. 

Late last year, a group of life sciences and healthcare companies, including AstraZeneca and Pfizer, and the Food and Drug Administration launched an alliance to speed adoption of decentralized trials and research.