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The Right Need
Innovation and research are the engines that drive treatment discoveries for patients. Better understanding of diseases and the development of future treatments today is done through clinical research (research involving humans). However, participant recruitment is the number one barrier to successful clinical research in North America with one third of clinical trials accruing less then 75% of the target participant group.
Thus, the single largest issue in developing treatments and moving healthcare forward is the difficulty in connecting patients with relevant research opportunities. This is not just a problem for the patients of the future, as patients today are potentially missing opportunities to access new therapies that might be beneficial for their current ailments through participation in clinical research. There is currently no adequate Canadian or international solution that effectively allows people to easily learn about and link to clinical studies that are relevant for their conditions. ClinLink allows patients to access relevant research, using a screening tool, with the hope that current conditions might be helped.
The Right Solution
The ClinLink application is a clinical matching algorithm that connects participants to research trials. The application holds a database of clinical trials and uses a participant-friendly interface which decodes technical trial criteria into simple clinical tags. ClinLink is a web-based application and will run on any internet connected device. This makes it easy to launch from the hospital intranet site, links to our public site from local health advocacy sites, or via hospital kiosks.
The Right Model
We believe there are three key enablers required to successfully match participants:
- Participant-friendly matching tool
- Privacy of personal Information
- Access to participants
Currently there is no other service that meets these three criteria. The ClinLink application effectively creates a participant friendly interface which displays complicated trial inclusion and exclusion criteria with simple clinical search terms. The application does not store health information, and thus Privacy of personal information is respected as participants are simply matched with trials. Through respecting participant privacy, there is the opportunity to partner with existing hospital infrastructure to provide access to participants in high traffic and clinical environments. The application can be linked to a hospitals intranet, to a hospital internet site and is structured to work in a kiosk network. The ClinLink model addresses the basic problems related to participant recruitment. Advocacy groups can also connect to ClinLink creating a powerful network which enables community outreach to clinical trials. ClinLink is an ethical solution to an important problem for participants, researchers and academic hospitals.
The Right Partnership
ClinLink is being piloted as a new tool to connect participants to clinical trials through a partnership of SearchlightMD and UHN’s Clinical Trial Resource Centre. Please be sure to pass on your feedback and help us continue to build a platform to connect patients to research.
For more information or to find out how you can get involved, please visit the ClinLink website.
