Taking Clinical Research into the AI era with Meteor
Published: 11.23.2023
The ongoing digitalisation of healthcare is opening up new horizons for more efficient and accurate clinical trials. Our latest software product, Meteor, is setting new standards by using artificial intelligence (AI) to take the handling of text data in data management and pharmacovigilance to the next level. A guest article by Dr Daniel-Timon Spanka.
Challenges in data management and pharmacovigilance
In clinical studies, data is often collected in the form of free text. Hastily completed by patients or study staff, these texts can be unclear or incorrectly documented. The result: data quality and patient safety are impaired. The manual review of these free texts from the eCRF represents a considerable challenge for the data management and pharmacovigilance departments. Experts invest valuable time in understanding the texts and checking for documentation errors. The experts then have to follow up on open questions or errors individually. All in all, a time-consuming but avoidable task.
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Meteor increases data quality and patient safety
This is where Meteor comes in, offering partial automation that significantly reduces the workload for process experts. A streamlined and intuitive user interface supports the specialist staff in checking free texts. Users are provided with an AI toolbox that allows them to focus on relevant texts. Specially trained AI models automatically check all texts for adverse events as well as medications, treatments and the correct documentation language. The experts in the specialist departments can therefore focus their data checks on the critical texts where documentation errors have been predicted. In addition, tedious searches for individual patient data in the eCRF can be completely dispensed with, as the entire patient history for each text is displayed to users at a glance. Meteor therefore offers innovative AI solutions, but users retain full flexibility and control over the degree of autonomy of the application.
What advantages does Meteor offer in clinical trials?
Patient safety is the top priority in clinical research. Meteor helps to identify potential problems, such as adverse drug reactions, in a timely manner. The combination of human expertise and machine precision enables more effective pharmacovigilance. Problems that patients may develop during trials are recognised more reliably, significantly improving the safety and integrity of clinical trials.
Another major advantage of Meteor is the massive increase in the quality of the data collected. By reducing human error through AI support, incorrect documentation can be found quickly and effectively. Meteor supports human decision-making and enables more intelligent and reliable data analysis.
The advantages of Meteor summarised:
· Increased efficiency and cost savings: Meteor improves the efficiency of experts, saves valuable time and reduces costs. By optimising the data review process and providing fast, accurate insights, experts can focus on strategic decision-making and keep their minds free for the essential aspects of the process.
· Higher data quality: AI significantly reduces error rates in documentation. This leads to increased data quality and therefore improved patient safety.
· Standardisation: An intuitive user interface enables standardisation of the review of clinical free texts - across departmental boundaries.
· Compliance: Every user action is carefully tracked in an audit trail to comply with the latest guidelines for computerised systems and electronic data in clinical trials.
Want to learn more about how Data Scientists work with Big Data and Artificial Intelligence to improve clinical research? Click here to read the full Interview with Dr. Paul Wallbott and Dr. Daniel-Timon Spanka.
Area of application and availability
Meteor is a browser-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution. The application is therefore accessible from anywhere and is independent of the size of a CRO or its technological equipment. Hosted in Germany, Meteor also fulfils the highest standards of data security and is of course validated in accordance with GAMP 5.
Overall, Meteor offers a pioneering solution to the challenges faced by CROs. The partial automation of processes not only saves costs and time, but also significantly increases the quality of clinical trial data and thus contributes to patient safety. Our Meteor software shows that the synergy of man and machine is shaping the future of clinical research.
