Health tech partnership to advance patient recruitment diversity and expand access to clinical trials

The US health tech company CardieX has announced a partnership between its ATCOR subsidiary and the patient recruitment marketplace Power to “democratise” access to clinical trials.

The new partnership is hoped to allow ATCOR and Power to conduct collaborative research and advance underrepresented patient access to clinical trials and clinical research within women’s health, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

The two companies aim to shift the paradigm on clinical trial diversity and change the current patient recruitment process.

A primary goal of the collaboration is the introduction of new approaches for screening patients with novel inclusion/exclusion criteria across all clinical trial models to increase patient access and patient diversity.

According to the developers, the “Pulse”, a new medical device from a CardieX subsidiary, will provide arterial health metrics to users from home, enabling any patient anywhere to be part of clinical trials.

Through the use of digital vascular biomarkers in the protocol, the device will enable customised patient recruitment to “enhance” diversity across populations.

Additionally, Power says its recruitment platform will make clinical trials accessible and inclusive of today’s socio-economic, geographic, and ethnicity disparities, enabling patient choice.

Toni R. Hofhine, president of CardieX subsidiary ATCOR Medical, said: “I am excited to partner with Power to advance patient recruitment diversity.

“Our ATCOR and Power partnership brings forward tremendous opportunity to push the boundaries of diversity within clinical trials.

“We will open doors for patients ‘anywhere’ to have equal access to clinical research and use our digital vascular biomarkers to enhance inclusion/exclusion criteria.”

Craig Cooper, group CEO of the CardieX companies, added: “Advancing underrepresented populations is essential for improving patient reported outcomes.

“The ATCOR and Power partnership will expand patient diversity across all clinical trial models, and I am excited to see the combined technologies engage the patient across some of the most challenging areas in medical research.”

Brandon Li, Power co-founder, said increasing patient access is key to improving representation in clinical research.

“Unfortunately, we don’t adequately understand the structural barriers that are often unintentionally exclusionary to people of colour,” he explained.

“I am excited to see our partnership with ATCOR begin to break down some of these barriers.”

The Pulse device will be available for healthcare research and clinical trials in the coming months.