IBM Watson Health Launches Data-Driven Tool to Optimize Clinical Trials

IBM Watson Health today unveiled its newest cloud-based technology IBM Study Advance at the 11th Annual Summit for Clinical Ops Executives (SCOPE).  The data-driven, study design tool, is designed to optimize clinical trial protocol design by merging automated access to real-world patient population data, standardizing protocol template guidance and providing a collaborative workspace designed to facilitate efficiency. On average, a single protocol amendment to a Phase III clinical trial can result in approximately $500,000 (USD) in unplanned expenses and an additional 61 days to the project timeline. IBM Study Advance is designed to offer critical insights during the process of study design to help reduce the number of amendments during clinical trials. The tool is designed with an interface to provide access to commercial and claims data from de-identified patient profiles covering 89 million lives from multiple employer-sponsored U.S. healthcare beneficiaries, as well as tools to assess the impact of inclusion and exclusion criteria on the eligible patient population.