June 2023 • PharmaTimes Magazine • 13
// CLINICAL TRIALS //
How trail-blazing digital technology can help engage with the disengaged
Dr Ian Wood, a GP and clinical director for EMIS, explores the vitally important, yet underrepresented role primary care plays within clinical research, and why technology is a game changer when it comes to encouraging participation from GPs and their patients.
The importance of primary care’s role in clinical research can’t be understated. It was acutely felt during the pandemic, with primary care data at the heart of helping to identify those most at risk from COVID-19, enabling vulnerable patient safeguarding and prioritisation of the largest vaccination programme to date.
Despite this, primary care’s participation in research remains under-represented, with just half of UK GP practices actively engaged.
As a GP I understand the impact primary care can bring to research and to population health.
GPs understand how people live with complex conditions. Our data is rich and can provide cradle to grave insight, whilst ensuring diversity, making recruitment for studies more targeted and representative.
Community pharmacy is taking on more delivery of clinical services. It has the most reachable primary care infrastructure with 89.2% of patients able to access one within a 20-minute walk – jumping to 99.8% in the most deprived areas.
Together, it’s clear to see, primary care is perfectly placed to support research. But also, because I’m a GP, I understand why so many of my peers aren’t engaged.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle is time, or lack of it. GPs are overwhelmed by a poorly addressed workforce and workload crisis and many feel that recruitment for research can be too time-consuming. When capacity is so stretched, it simply falls down the list of priorities.
They may too have had their perception of what’s involved in supporting clinical research coloured by hearsay or previous experience. Here, however, is where technology could provide a real opportunity to unlock more research through primary care.
Technology is helping to bridge the gap between GP practices and researchers. New digital tools are capable of scanning electronic patient records to identify potentially eligible patients, replacing manual processes and taking away participation burden from practices.
The process of identification to invitation to participate in a study can now be fully automated, allowing a once laborious process to be streamlined and recruitment more refined.
But this isn’t just about making participation in medical research more accessible for GPs, technology is also enabling studies to reach underrepresented patient groups from within primary care.
Despite being disproportionately affected by the pandemic, data from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) revealed that just 13.8% of people from within ethnic minority communities participated in medical research.
As GPs know only too well under-representation in clinical research risks treatments being developed that may not be effective for all, widening the health inequality gap.
Technological innovation in clinical research provides a real opportunity to engage with the disengaged – be that GPs or community pharmacy or previously difficult to reach patient groups. Its adoption will become a real game changer for population health.
Go to emishealth.com