Through surveys and the sensors on an iPhone, the GSK PARADE app gathers info on symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, including joint pain, fatigue, and mood. One of the benefits of using an app is that it’s easier to gather data when patients don’t have to travel to research centers, said DiCicco. The app Glaxo created from ResearchKit is available with a guided wrist exercise that puts in use the phone’s sensors to record motion. The study will not involve testing efficacy of a medicine; rather it focuses on using ResearchKit to collect relevant data that would support further studies into finding treatment for patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
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GlaxoSmithKline has become the first pharmaceuticals company to use a medical research app from Apple to study how disease affects patients in real time.
Apple has struck its first partnership with a drug company, after it unveiled ResearchKit in March previous year. Medicines are not being tested via the platform now.
Apple has established its first industry partnership for its clinical platform, ResearchKit, teaming up with pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to support the drugmaker’s new rheumatoid arthritis trial. According to Apple Insider, Clinical studies normally cost millions of dollars in finding and recruiting participants with other expenses like paying nurses and doctors to study the participants after obtaining consent during the period of study. Furthermore, Glaxo’s entry diversifies the kind of institutions that have utilized ResearchKit up until now, which have included hospitals and universities.
Rob DiCicco, vice president of GSK’s Clinical Pharmacology Sciences and Study Operations, said the study makes the processes much faster, decreasing costs by considerable amounts.
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The app is named GSK Parade, says the company in a press release, and it is powered by Medidata and POSSIBLE mobile. That 300 number isn’t an upper limit, GSK explained in an email to MobiHealthNews, but rather an estimate of how many participants they can expect in a relatively short 12-week study timeline. However, there are potential shortcomings with using ResearchKit to conduct studies, something DiCicco partially acknowledged when he said, “One thing we’ll learn is whether we made it compelling enough to make you want to interact with it every day”.
