A clinical data management system is responsible for managing the massive amounts of data collected during clinical trials. AI has a symbiotic relationship with data management systems. The more data a system has, the better the AI will function. AI is capable of simplifying, optimizing, and automating numerous data management processes.
Effective data management is a mission-critical function of clinical data management. The vast majority of clinical research organizations have recently begun adopting AI and ML-powered solutions in clinical data management. Clinical teams have to spend long hours managing the data cleaning process instead of analyzing the data their systems collect. Manual data management is helpful, but it takes but it consumes more time and budget when compared to AI-powered data management systems.
Today we’re going to discuss the role of AI in clinical data management and how it optimizes the clinical trial process.
Reasons to Use AI in Clinical Data Management
AI reveals undiscovered potential for accelerating clinical trials. It can reduce costs and speed up every stage of the drug development process. Moreover, AI can be used to identify the drugs themselves. Exscientia, a pharmatech company in Oxford, uses AI-powered clinical molecules to target the behavioral and psychological symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.
However, the pharma and clinical research industries are quite slow in adopting modern technologies. But in some way, the COVID-19 pandemic has served as an accelerator for the pharmaceutical industry. It forced the industry leaders to innovate their processes, rethink their approaches, and adopt new ways of working at a speed never seen before.
AI and Big Data are the most intricate technologies entering the clinical trial and pharmaceutical industries for 2022. According to a report by GlobalData, more and more pharmaceutical and clinical research companies are hiring AI and Big Data engineers to take advantage of these emerging technologies.
Data Optimization
Data collection is the primary goal of research and clinical trials. Thanks to modern technologies, researchers can collect even more valuable information to access the effectiveness of a treatment plan or a drug. But data collected doesn’t mean data used. It can result in many key data points getting lost or ignored during the research period.
Here’s where AI comes in handy. AI can assist researchers at every phase of the data cycle or in any process that requires aggregation, storage, and data retrieval. AI-powered algorithms can identify data types, find connections between datasets, and even recognize knowledge via natural language processing algorithms.
The adoption of AI algorithms leads to a higher ROI over time since the data systems can be trained to highlight and retrieve more data. The following algorithms can also improve the processes of data cleaning. Hence, AI can reduce collection errors and system hiccups to a minimum.
Multiple Data Sources
Over the years, the pharmaceutical industry has generated tons of data from observational studies and clinical trials. Its quantity is growing exponentially and can be used in multiple research fields.
Effective digital infrastructure powered by AI algorithms could enable a continual stream of clinical data. In addition, consolidating all data can enhance collaboration and provide more insights over vital metrics from multiple sources. Since AI improves when given access to more data, access to multiple databases could significantly impact medical research.
But there are several challenges to consider, such as appropriate governance, ownership, privacy, and security. It gets even more complicated when multiple stakeholders are involved.
Faster and Better Results
The primary goal of adopting AI and ML into the clinical data management process is to get pharmaceutical treatments to market faster. This, in turn, helps reduce the price of research and patients can receive the drugs they need faster.
AI algorithms can analyze millions of pharmaceutical compounds and find the most effective solution much faster than a human researcher. Let’s look at the Human Genome Project as an example. It took scientists 13+ years to create a remarkable advancement in fighting genetic diseases. With the adoption of AI, it would take up to 24 hours.
AI and ML tools are fast, so they can catch problems early on and prevent an entire trial from being corrupted by bad data. Thanks to natural language processing, computers can analyze spoken and written words. This allows for searching through things like doctors’ notes and pathology reports for more valuable information.
Data Structuring
AI, along with ML-powered tools, natural language processing, text analysis, and sentiment analysis, are capable of making unstructured data quantitive. The following AI-powered model can analyze the text from any PDFs or faxes sent and provide more insights into the research and its results. All the unstructured data that doesn’t fit into any pre-defined data models cannot be stored in a relational database and, as a result, cannot be processed or used.
Examples of unstructured data:
- Media
- Text files
- Emails
- Communication data
- Social media and websites
The adoption of ML and AI and analyzing insights from structured and unstructured data will increase the efficiency of clinical trials and facilitate well-informed decision-making.
How Unicsoft Helps
Pharmaceutical companies and clinical research organizations have a rising demand for fast-track drug development and research processes where the fast and smart Clinical Data Management system is one of the greatest concerns.
AI, ML, and Big Data help streamline the processes of data collection and management. AI can leverage more data from each patient and provide more reliable, faster, and patient-centric clinical trials. However, the following technologies cannot solve every problem facing clinical research. They can allow for accomplishing tasks in a few hours that would take months or years when doing so manually. Hence, researchers will be able to deliver the right therapies and treatments to patients faster and save more lives.
At Unicsoft, we know how to implement software solutions and emerging technologies for higher operational efficiency and better clinical outcomes. Contact us to get a free consultation.
