Pharmaceutical giant Astra Zeneca is planning to roll out handheld
devices for use in its clinical drug testing trials
The company hopes to improve the quality of the information it
receives and speed up the time to market of the latest drugs for
serious illnesses.
The move marks the growing acceptance of handheld computers in
business environments.
As part of a pilot scheme, Astra Zeneca will initially give Compaq
iPaq personal digital assistants (PDAs) to about 20 people
trialling the latest medical drugs.
The Microsoft Pocket PC 2002-based devices, running an application
from software provider Conchango, could eventually be rolled out to
up to 3,000 users, according to Jill Glover, technical architect at
Astra Zeneca.
Currently, people taking part in clinical drug testing trials use
traditional diaries which they fill out at the end of each week.
Glover said this has proved unreliable as testers are not monitored
on when they are administering drugs and results are sometimes not
recorded clearly.
With the new system, Astra Zeneca will preload the PDA with
relevant questions to be answered at certain times of the day
within selected time slots.
Notifications will appear if any of the areas of the questionnaire
have not been correctly completed and answers will be immediately
transmitted to Astra Zeneca.
Medical researchers will be able to monitor for illness and change
the dosage accordingly.
"The quality of the information will be much richer and as it is
all centrally controlled we will avoid re-keying of data which
means we will be able to use our resources more efficiently," said
Glover.
Developing and clinical testing of a drug can take up to seven
years and Astra Zeneca hopes to shorten this time with the help of
the PDA-based system, Glover said. Astra Zeneca is also considering
using PDAs in other areas of the business, she added.
The main aim of this move is to reduce the amount of equipment
staff have to carry when travelling, but the company is also
looking at using the devices in its engineering department.
daniel.thomas@rbi.co.uk