eClinical - Scimcon

Profile

Name: Dave Sanders
Job title: Head of ePRO and eClinical Services
Pets: We have a guinea pig. During the summer it likes to roam free in the garden.
Favourite animal: Elephant
Favourite food: Fish, chips and mushy peas
Favourite film: The Star Wars collection
Fun fact: I have jumped out of an airplane

What do you enjoy the most about working at Scimcon?

Prior to joining Scimcon I had worked for large and medium sized corporations. I enjoyed my time in these organisations, but one of the qualities that initially attracted me to Scimcon was the small, close nit team that felt more like a family where every individual really matters to the success of the company. As it is a small company, you cannot hide, sit back and let others do the work for you. Everyone pulls their weight, and we back each other up if we face challenges.

Scimcon has also allowed me to work on a variety of interesting projects in areas I may not have been able to access in my previous roles.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

I have always had an interest in photography, but my real passion lies in astrophotography. My degree was in Physics and Astronomy, and I have therefore always had a fascination with the Universe. I like to take photos of the Milky Way, and I have travelled to Lapland and Iceland where I was lucky enough to have been able to get photos of the Aurora Borealis. I also recently took a photo of the Neowise comet over Ely Cathedral. My 9-year-old daughter has recently become interested in photography, so when we get chance to go for a walk in the countryside as a family, we take our cameras and try to get some landscape photos or photos of flowers, birds, and similar.

A picture containing nature, outdoor, snow, sky Description automatically generated — Lapland – Aurora and Milky Way

A picture containing outdoor, building, clock, tower Description automatically generated — Ely Cathedral

Something else I do in my spare time is exercise – I would not say it was a hobby, but more of a chore! I exercise for at least an hour a day, six days a week. This consists of two days at my local bootcamp at 6:20am, outside in the cold, dark and often rain in the winter, with an instructor and a team of about 20 other people. The other four days are purely aerobic, either jogging or using the cross trainer. I am a member of my local gym where I used their cross trainer, but due to the lockdown closing all gyms back in March I bought my own, and haven’t been to the gym since.

When I get the opportunity, I like to have a round of golf too. I usually play with my Dad who is a member of his local golf club, however I do not do it very often as 18 holes usually takes up three hours at least. As I do not play too often, I’m not terribly good, but conversely, I’m not terrible.

What is your favourite travel destination?

When we go on holiday we like to travel to interesting places and try to immerse ourselves in the culture. Some of the more interesting places we have been on holiday are; as mentioned above, Lapland and Iceland, but we have also been to Beijing and walked along the Great Wall of China, Istanbul, Malaysia, Singapore. Once COVID-19 is behind us we would like to take the kids to Australia and Japan.

2020 has been an interesting year – how has it impacted you outside of work?

Prior to COVID-19, it was nice to spend time with friends, having a drink and a laugh, however with the changing restrictions it is not something we get to enjoy regularly at the moment. One thing my friends and I enjoyed doing was a games night. Poker, Black-Jack and Trivial Pursuit; it’s very light-hearted, but it brings out the competitive nature in people.

With the restrictions discouraging activities with people outside of your household, we have recently taken up coarse fishing as a family. It is something that we thought would be something fun to do, to get out of the house and enjoy together. We fish on the nearby Great Ouse river and catch fish such as perch, roach and rudd. It is purely something we do for fun, so we always return the fish back to the river.

Scimcon as a business is deeply rooted in technology – but how technology-oriented are you? What devices do you use, and does your use of technology differ outside of work?

This question brings a smile to my face as my wife knows only too well how much I like technology, much to her annoyance. Over the years I have added more and more Philips Hue lights to the house, to the point where every room has at least one. We use Alexa to turn lights on and off.

Similarly, we have a number of Sonos speakers around the house which are also controlled through Alexa. I like the idea of having an electronic assistant, I think it reminds me of some scifi films of the 80’s and 90’s.

I use a Macbook and Adobe Lightroom to edit photos and I share them on Instagram (if I think they’re good enough).

My use of technology at home is very different to work. However, I think the skills I learn from setting up a new device or configuring the way it works can be applied to my work. The use of these devices, and the associated interconnectivity in the home setting helps me keep abreast of the latest technology, which has applications within projects at work too

Demonstrating the need for ePRO: COVID-19 makes the point

Outbreaks in recent years, such as SARS, avian flu, and Ebola, in retrospect seem to have been a testing ground for the current COVID-19 lockdown.

During those outbreaks, study sponsors experienced the challenges of managing clinical trials in traditional ways, and many therefore pushed forward their adoption of eClinical platforms to ensure they could still manage their trials in remote locations, while reducing the impact on their project timelines, ensuring their investigators and monitors remained safe, and enabling their subjects to demonstrate compliance.

Why ePRO works so well in lockdown

The traditional process of conducting clinical trials involves face-to-face interaction with subjects, which is proving difficult in the current lockdown. Subjects still need to make visits to clinical study sites to meet with healthcare professionals however the need to take part in lengthy reviews of their paper diaries is removed when using ePRO. By adopting ePRO for subject reporting, it is possible to significantly reduce the need for close face-to-face interaction with subjects and speed up the collection of quality data. In addition study sponsors benefit from a huge reduction in the travel of the onsite monitoring teams as ePRO increases the ability to conduct remote study monitoring.

With ePRO, the reporting and audit trail is also improved, since it is possible to prove that patients respond daily in accordance with the study Protocol (not possible with manual records).

BYOD (Bring your own device) is another consideration. It is recognised by Scimcon that BYOD reduces hardware challenges associated with the shipment of devices, but more importantly in the current situation removing the need for devices to be passed from human to human both within the logistics departments of the vendors and between the investigators and subjects (often ePRO devices are reused between subjects on an individual study). An upcoming post will cover the BYOD topic in more detail,

Moving from paper: better reporting and ALCOA principles

The regulator’s requirements for Accurate, Legible, Contemporaneous, Original and Attributable (ALCOA) data are achievable with ePRO platforms, where it has always proved difficult to remove doubt with paper-based Patient Reported Outcomes. In paper records, it is far more difficult for instance to prove when information was recorded, whereas in eClinical platforms when and by whom data is entered is automatically recorded, giving more accurate insight. Legiblity issues obviously become an issue of the past with ePRO.

The clinical trials community has been debating the benefits of ePRO for many years, and with the advent of COVID-19 where face-to-face interactions need to be limited, its adoption seems prescient. ePRO is the no-brainer product for now and future trials, both on data quality and in order to reduce concerns of unnecessary social interactions. Scimcon has hands-on experience with global clinical trials projects and is proven with ePRO platforms, doing what we do best: serving the science community with our skilled project teams to manage data projects globally.