Press release : International Clinical Trials Day 2023 - Decentralised clinical trials: Making Clinical trials more accessible?

International Clinical Trial Day 2023 will focus on Decentralised Clinical Trials: Challenges and Opportunities. It will be co-hosted by ECRIN (European Clinical Research Infrastructure Network) and its Polish scientific partner the Polish Medical Research Agency on May 23rd 2023.  ICTD commemorates the start of the landmark clinical trial, led by James Lind on sailors with scurvy, 20 May 1747. Having laid the foundation for modern clinical research, ECRIN salutes this initiative by addressing a new topic in clinical research every year on or around this date.

ICTD was launched in 2005 by ECRIN, in line with its mission to support multinational clinical research in Europe. ICTD brings together patients, health policy actors, health authorities, clinical researchers, health professionals and citizens from Europe, and beyond to discuss issues related to multinational clinical trials.

ICTD this year will be a hybrid event, direct from Warsaw, that will run from 9:00 to 4:30 CEST and is free and open to all. Participants can join the speakers at the Hotel Bellotto in Warsaw or follow the events online.

Decentralised clinical trials

Decentralised clinical trials aim to ease patient access to clinical trials by diminishing the need for patients to travel to trial sites. Through the use of digital health technologies real-time, remote, data acquisition can provide the trial with crucial information all while maintaining patient privacy and security. The COVID-19 pandemic provided a real boost to the efforts to implement decentralised clinical trials and many stakeholders, including regulatory bodies, are working to developed recommendations and best practices to safeguard patients and their data in this new research model.

Agenda

This day brings together speakers from across Europe to discuss the state of the art, and the challenges and opportunities. We welcome Dr. Amy Rogers, MEMO Research, Division of Molecular and Clinical Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Dundee, who will share lessons learned about Decentralised Clinical Trials in Europe from the Trials@Home project. This is followed by a session of different stakeholder perspectives including patients, regulators and industry.

In the afternoon we resume by addressing the more operations and technological approaches that can be put in place from consent to device applications and trial management. To close out the day we will ask experts to analyse the pros and cons of this new clinical trial approach.

About ECRIN

ECRIN is the European Clinical Research Infrastructure Network, a public, non-profit organisation that focuses on academic-sponsored multinational clinical trials as well as clinical trials initiated by SMEs. It provides sponsors and investigators with advice, management services and tools to navigate Europe’s fragmented health and legal systems on clinical trials. ECRIN has national scientific partners in 12 countries covering more than 350 million citizens. Multi-country clinical trials mean greater access to patients, resources, and expertise, and, in turn, faster and potentially more robust results.

Registration for ICTD 2023: https://ecrin.org/ictd-2023