The Challenge
It is common for clinical studies to take a long time from idea until the study is actively recruiting.
The outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic called for a greater need to accelerate clinical studies, in order to develop new norms and standards that help contain the spread of the virus and save more lives.
In November 2021, South Africa notified the WHO of a newly emerging COVID variant: Omikron. The global medical community was challenged to answer three questions about the new variant: how contagious, how serious, and do the vaccines work against Omikron? Oslo University Hospital (OUS) started to search for a solution that could provide answers to these questions that the world desperately needed.
The Solution
OUS chose Ledidi Core to manage the study, from start to finish, including study design, data collection, management, and analysis processes using built-in statistical methods and data visualization.
With a user-friendly do-it-yourself interface, researchers and patients were able to adopt Ledidi Core fast, without significant implementation costs and resources.
The goal of the initial study was to include as many Omikron and Delta patients as possible within two weeks.
Patients self-reported using Ledidi Core from both Norway and South Africa. Within 2 weeks, the first conclusions were drawn from 52 patients infected by Omikron, and 18 by Delta, while 14 healthy individuals were placed in a control group.
Ledidi Core also enabled repeatable processes for all COVID-19-related research the hospital will be involved in in the future, thanks to the possibility to create reusable templates in the platform.
Impact
- Accelerate clinical studies timeline significantly from months to just 2 weeks
- Cut costs, and reduce dependency by rolling out a user-friendly, web-based digital platform that did not require coding, extensive technical implementation, or involvement of IT consultancy firms like today’s legacy systems
- Monitor clinical data in "real-time". With Ledidi Core’s built-in statistical methods, researchers could perform statistical analysis and draw conclusions from insights in real-time, as survey results arrived, without having to extract data for analysis in other platforms
- Continue to withhold high privacy and data security standards without compromise, by benefiting from Ledidi’s unique Confidential Computing technology and strict compliance with recognised standards such as ISO, HIPPA and the NHS's Data Security and Protection Toolkit.
You can read more about the project on OUS’s website here.
