Successful Clinical Research Starts with Improved Visibility into Detailed Patient Data

Clinical research organizations continue to push the boundaries in the effort to develop and bring to market new lifesaving drugs and therapies. The pace and velocity of research continues to climb exponentially. According to ClinicalTrials.gov , the number of trials jumped from 2,893 in 2001 to 33,929 in 2021, the most recent full year on record.

The sad reality is that many clinical trials will fail, with the inability to find eligible patients one of the primary culprits driving down success rates. Successfully bringing patients into a trial starts with having access to a detailed accounting of medical history and conditions.

But most research organizations and hospital networks simply do not have the tools and resources to find eligible patients within their respective networks with any degree of efficiency or accuracy. The challenge has become even more pronounced as networks have grown and as protocols have become incredibly more detailed. The typical clinical trial protocol today contains an average of 24 inclusion and exclusion criteria, rendering the traditional approach of matching insurance diagnostic codes virtually useless.

Research coordinators spend hours manually scrolling through EMR and other data sources, swiveling back and forth between screens – protocol criteria on one and patient records on another. It’s a labor-intensive and time-consuming process that is prone to error.

BEKtranslate changes the paradigm for research organizations struggling to navigate their patient data.

With BEKtranslate, a research organization of any size and breadth can gain a deeper, comprehensive, and more granular level of visibility into their EMR patient data records across the entirety of their network – and they can explore this trove of information in real time and gain insights in a matter of minutes.

BEKtranslate connects seamlessly to a patient data record source, such as EMR databases, to allow BEK’s artificial intelligence engine to interpret all the available structured and unstructured data in each patient’s chart. The number of records – age, race, ethnicity, other demographics, medication history, diagnoses, lab tests, vital signs, etc. – can easily number in the 10’s of billions. The patient chart is automatically translated and converted into a unified format with a common research ontology, enabling it to be imported into and then understood by the platform.

With the protocol language as the guide, BEK’s artificial intelligence engine interprets the collected and cleansed data to look for specific words and patterns of medical events that have happened – as well as those that have not happened – for clues as to whether a patient might have the requisite credentials for participation. During this process, BEK’s technology also flags any irregularities in the data, prompting an investigation of findings that were not expected or are outside the norm.

At the end of the process, the results are validated by BEK and ultimately generate for the research organization a highly accurate – better than 90% – database of potential study candidates.

When it comes to patient medical records, it goes without saying that security is of the utmost importance. BEKhealth undergoes annual third-party data privacy audits and software penetration tests to ensure compliance with the latest data protection standards. BEKhealth has also been vetted and approved by the major EMR vendors, making connections to existing EMR networks all that much easier. Should a research organization prefer, BEKhealth’s technology can also be installed on-premises behind firewalls.

The road to a successful clinical trial starts with fully knowing patients. BEKTranslate relieves much of the manual heavy lifting and administrative headaches that have so often burdened research organizations, ultimately saving time and money and leading to more informed and smarter decisions as to which trials to take on. Providers and researchers can focus on offering clinical research as a care option to patients instead of conducting inefficient manual chart reviews.