Human centred clinical trials driving increased participation

At UCB, patients are at the center of everything we do. With that comes an understanding that patients are not only patients but are first and foremost human beings. That is why innovation, to me, means human centric health, and delivering human centred clinical trials as part of people’s health journey.

When it comes to clinical trials our vision is to educate, empower and enable all patients to actively participate. Traditionally, clinical trials were conducted in a clinical setting in 100% of cases. That is all changing, with a move towards hybrid clinical trials split between the clinic and the home, where possible, and putting human needs at the center of our clinical trials. 

Many of the patients that we serve have complex conditions and our aim is to make clinical trial participation as easy as possible, enabling participants to continue with their day-to-day lives with minimal disruption. By combining participant-centred design with innovative technologies, we seek to increase flexibility and optionality. For example, on those days where patients need more flexibility, we endeavour to offer a home option.

For our solutions to be meaningful to each patient’s needs we must ensure that clinical trials are representative of the diverse communities that we serve, and cater to a diverse array of situations that are unique to each patient. That is why we are striving for optionality at every stage of drug development through to treatment. The increase in choice can expand the patient footprint throughout the clinical trial process and help empower more people from diverse communities, a diverse range of ages, a diversity of situations, and remote locations to participate in trials. 

To make clinical trials a part of a human centric health journey, we must deliver a diverse set of options that enable all to participate.. To that end we are leveraging innovative technology to pilot and deploy remote patient-centric sampling and data capture solutions, such as PK blood sampling, non-invasive skin biopsies and imaging.

Innovative technological solutions are aiding the expansion of trials from the clinic into the home and placing patients’ needs at the heart of drug discovery to ensure that UCB solutions reach all communities and serve diverse human needs.

Innovation is at the center of everything our R&D colleagues do at UCB, but how we innovate is as unique as our employees. For this reason, we asked our researchers to share with you what innovation means to them. So, take a look at what they think innovation is on our dedicated ‘innovation is’ website here.