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n order for companies not to have to fire staff,
PharmaRelations has together with the affected companies found solutions where its consultants have agreed to reduced working hours. “So in these cases we as a consultant company and our consultants have decreased our undertakings for our customers. We have not furloughed anyone due to that reason but we know that other companies have been forced to furlough workers during the spring of 2020,” says Anjou. In the Swecare report many member companies anticipate a negative trend for the next six months, but the pandemic has also clearly highlighted the companies’ capabilities to develop new and innovative solutions, with 78 percent of respondents (including every large member company) reporting as such. Most innovations involve digitalization to address novel needs that have arisen during the pandemic, both within companies and for customer relations. Demand for digital healthcare services has increased and is expected to continue. Digitalization has also been an important key for companies in trying to handle the effects from the COVID-19 pandemic. At PharmaRelations they have for example carried out recruitments completely digitally, where neither the company nor the customers have met the candidate live and where the whole recruitment process has been performed digitally. “This has succeeded beyond expectation. During the spring we have performed more interviews than ever and our goal has been to prepare ourselves for post-corona and we have met more candidates and performed more customer activities than ever during the spring, all digitally of course and all over the Nordic region,” says Anjou. An area where digitalization has been crucial, and will continue to be so, is within clinical trials. The Research-Based Pharmaceutical Industry (LIF) in Sweden has previously made a proposition to the Committee for Technology Innovation and Ethics (KOMET) about this matter. In an interview with Läkemedelsmarknaden, Karolina Antonov, analyst at LIF, says that the COVID-19 pandemic may help accelerate the development of digital clinical trials. “We need to be better in both collecting and verifying data digitally. The pandemic has also shed light on the need for being able to distribute pharmaceuticals at home to patients involved in a study, which we have previously highlighted in several different investigations and opinion statements,” commented Antonov in the interview. Alex Karlsson Parra, CEO at Immunicum adds that for the future, an optimal performance of clinical trials include thoroughly vetting the clinical service providers in the selection process as well as the clinical trial sites. AstraZeneca’s EVP of Oncology R&D, José Baselga, recently shared his top five takeaways from a session on the Regulatory and Operational Implications of Cancer Clinical Trial Changes During COVID-19 at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) COVID-19 and Cancer virtual meeting. During the session the impact of the pandemic on clinical trials for cancer and how we, as an industry, are adapting was discussed. “My fellow panellists provided perspectives from all corners of oncology, and the discussion confirmed what I had suspected: when it comes to helping patients, our drive to innovate and adapt seemingly has no bounds,” he said. “One learning was that this is an opportunity to rethink trial design and implementation. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed inequalities and inefficiencies across the healthcare continuum, but it also showed what is possible when, out of necessity, we focus on the main challenge in front of us. Within AstraZeneca, we have worked with investigators to flex and adapt for cancer patients: leveraging telehealth, delivering medications directly to patients’ homes and fast-tracking the implementation of digital technologies to closely monitor our oncology trials in real time.” The second takeway was that the data is out there; we need better ways of getting it. COVID-19 has forced us to take a hard look at and see where we can simplify clinical trials for cancer to ensure we are efficiently answering the question at hand and collecting the most relevant data. How can we reevaluate our protocols while continuing to collect important data and maintain rigorous safety protocols? Are there ways to obtain information without requiring patients to travel to a hospital every few weeks? Innovations in big data, AI and machine learning have allowed us to take a new approach in designing our oncology clinical trials with patients at the centre. aselga’s third takeaway was that trial access is not equitable across all populations.Clinical trials within oncology are not as diverse as they could or should be, and some communities are routinely underrepresented. Physical access to academic medical centres (and transportation options) is just one of the most visible barriers. As we work to “decentralize” care, are we doing everything we can to reduce the burden on patients? The pandemic has forced us to “virtualize” in many ways, and we need to carry this through with telehealth, e-consent options and medication delivery. He also said that collaboration and open communication improve system efficiency. Virtual interactions have enabled collaboration at an unprecedented scale. “We’ve witnessed first-hand the impact of this increasingly efficient communication: the US FDA drafted guidance in a matter of weeks on the conduct of clinical trials during the pandemic – this process would usually take months.” NLS NORDIC LIFE SCIENCE 43