Clinical Ring (CR)

Clinical Ring Solution

Inspiration

The COVID-19 emergency has not just highlighted the need for a new vaccine, but has shown the extreme fragility of the current chain of clinical tests, stopping or at least postponing all clinical trials currently in progress in the world, about 3000 per year in Europe. Because today, access to hospitals is forbidden for employees of pharmaceutical companies and medical personnel do not have time to spent for clinical data entry into the various clinical trial management systems. A little number of people knows the real times to put a vaccine on the market; and that in addition to the research and development phase, a clinical trial phase is compulsory, which takes the same amount of time dedicated to research and development, if not more. So the time to market of the COVID-19 vaccine can vary from 12 months, according to the most optimistic forecasts, to 24 months, for the most realistic ones. While most people in the world today wonder when the vaccine will arrive, we asked ourselves more than six months ago: is it possible to reduce the time to market of a vaccine, more generally of a drug or a medical device? And after many reflections and discussions, our answer is YES. Faced with a clinical trial lasting 12 months, for example on 1000 patients, would you be happy to save 2 months? Sixty days compared to 360 days may seem not much, but if we think about the infections that occurred in 60 days or more simply the consequences for the European economy for 60 days, perhaps the perspective changes. Well, with our solution we can save time and work for both healthcare and corporate staff.

What it does

So the solution we identified, named CLINICAL RING, is a solution that autonomously extracts all the information required by the specific clinical study directly from the electronic medical record of a patient who entered the study, processes these data , connects them to each other and finally inserts them into the clinical trial management system. It is a real time, turnkey solution for both the corporate and those who carry out clinical studies in hospitals. CLINICAL RING allows to reduce costs for company, very important in this crisis period and it also guarantees a strong corporate, hospital and social benefit by reducing the duration of a clinical trial and therefore speeding up the entry of the product on the market.

How we built it

We analyzed the development process of a drug or a biomedical device from several points of view and we convinced ourselves that to bring innovation in this area, it is not necessary to act on the research and development phase. We can innovate, we can also create value by expanding the data processing and delivery services and channels. From a technical point of view, Clinical Ring is based on a distributed system developed starting from modern semantic analysis technologies, artificial intelligence and public key infrastructure. A modular system based on three functional pillars: a distributed DB oriented to the semantic web, equipped with connectors towards the most common electronic medical record systems; a pattern recognition engine, artificial intelligence capable of automatically inferring the digitized contents and at the same time checking the consistency of the data entered thanks to a formal rules verification engine; a public key infrastructure system in blockchain logic, which guarantees security in the exchange of data, but is at the same time able to manage the withdrawal of consent and the repudiation of data, where necessary.

Challenges we ran into

The thought is widely shared that if everyone continued to behave in the same way, that which was considered rational up to now, there would be no small businesses, explorations ... there would be no innovation and there would be no inspirational movements. Our strategic focus for the creation of a market is not to introduce a technological innovation but to seek through its use to obtain a great impact on people; essentially converting a technological innovation into what is called a value innovation.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are pleased to share that what fascinates us most and therefore unites us three friends, partners in this case, has been and still is trying to understand in how many different ways the same goal can be achieved. And it is our confidence in the possibility of being able to remove the obstacles that prevent every single solution from fully expressing its potential, precisely this trust is what is good for the business, for our business. We are proud of our team and our values.

What we learned

Thanks to our experience we have the practical tools for creating a market and an effective guide to apply them and therefore be able to transform a perspective into a new irresistible real offer that creates economic and social impact. In addition to the tools for creating the market and a clear guide on how to apply them, we are sure that we have managerial humanity that strengthens confidence in acting. These three are the pillars of our creative competence, which together with the control levers will allow us to redefine the boundaries of the market in our favor.

What's next for Clinical Ring (CR)

R&D activities are in progress ... we just have to continue on our way and find good partners! To move forward our project we have to develop a Marketing and Communication plan and implement a Pilot Solution with two kinds of stakeholders (Pharma Company and Hospital).