Clinithink and Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Shortlisted for Prestigious HSJ Award
- Clinithink helps supercharge clinical trial patient recruitment at Newcastle Hospitals.
- Clinithink’s AI solution, CliX accelerate, processed over a quarter of a million patient records in hours.
- Additional time saved is focused on increasing patient interaction.
Clinithink has been shortlisted for the Connecting Services and Information Award at this year’s HSJ Awards, for their joint submission with Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS foundation Trust.
The submission was based on a partnership that saw Clinithink’s CLiX accelerate solution successfully used by the Trust’s clinical research staff to transform the way patients, who are potentially eligible to participate in clinical trials, are initially identified. Traditionally this task is done manually and is very labour intensive, taking up valuable clinical research staff time which could be better spent talking to potentially eligible patients to explain the trial, better enabling them to decide if they want
to participate.According to the NIHR’s own league table the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s clinical research centre is currently one of the top performing clinical research sites in the NHS for patient recruitment. But, despite being an established and high-profile clinical research institution, the Trust’s team had been seeking a more efficient patient recruitment model to support their clinical research function. The cost of recruitment continues to increase. A report by Cutting Edge Information reported that, between 2008 and 2011, the cost of recruitment per patient increased 88% in the UK. This is coupled with the cost of delays. More than three-quarters of all clinical trials experience delays, and with the daily bill for this being somewhere between US$600,000 and US$8m, the need for a more reliable and efficient solution is pressing.
Prior to the use of CLiX accelerate, the research team at Newcastle Hospitals had spent three years manually reviewing over 2000 patients, identifying 30 potentially eligible candidates for one trial during that time. Using Clinithink’s CLiX accelerate solution the same team was able to process the records of 270,000 patients and identify people who were potentially highly eligible in less than 24 hours. This produced a shortlist of 100 patients in a fraction of the previous time.
By utilising Clinithink’s CLiX accelerate, valuable time has been released to enable research staff to focus on patient interaction and, in turn, improve patient access to clinical research, with its associated benefits.
As a result of the Clinithink partnership, patients not previously identified by the research teams have been offered a chance to participate, resulting in a marked increase in patient access to clinical trials. By saving clinical research staff time in laborious pre-screening, use of the solution improves ROI on the R&D spend for the Trust.
Professor Julia Newton, Deputy Medical Director of Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS foundation Trust said: “Working with Clinithink has changed how we deliver commercial work. We have topped the NIHR league tables for research for seven consecutive years now, we are proud of how we deliver to time and target, and we are always looking for ways to work better and more efficiently. Clinithink represents such innovation for us.”
As a result of the success of this project the Newcastle team is looking to work with more NHS Trusts in the North East to expand patient access to clinical research still further with CLiX accelerate. On an even wider scale, the NHS has announced its intention to replicate the model of Newcastle’s Phase 3 unit across five other regions in the UK.
The capability of Clinithink’s CLiX is not confined to clinical trials. The software can also be used to stratify patients based on their phenotype, thereby identifying which patients may benefit from genetic testing for rare disease. Combining the insights derived from the unstructured data, with the ever-increasing amount of biomarker information available, will allow CLiX’s end users to better understand the phenotypic differences between cohorts of otherwise similar patients, enabling a greater understanding of disease progression and response to treatment.
Chris Tackaberry, CEO of Clinithink, said of the news “We are exceptionally proud to make the shortlist for the Connecting Services and Information Award at this year’s HSJ Awards. Our work with Newcastle Hospitals has been truly exciting from the start, and to be recognised in this way for the impact our solution has made for the clinical team and their patients is terrific testimony to the hard work of all those involved on both sides of the collaboration. We await further news with great excitement!”
The full list of nominees for the 2019 HSJ awards (partnered by GRI) can be found on https://awards.hsj.co.uk/2019-shortlist.
Winners will be selected ahead of the 2019 HSJ awards ceremony, which is due to be held at the Battersea Evolution Centre in London on November 6th 2019.
About Clinithink:
Clinithink’s platform delivers the deepest, fastest and most accurate analysis currently possible of unstructured clinical data across patient populations. When used in revenue cycle, our analyses provide HIM professionals with the knowledge they need to quickly and accurately validate clinical documentation. It enables our partners to provide swift analysis for gaps in documentation to speed reimbursement and drive revenue back to their client’s bottom lines. For further information visit www.clinithink.com
ABOUT THE HSJ AWARDS
The most coveted accolade in UK healthcare, the HSJ awards is the largest annual benchmarking and recognition programme for the health sector. Over the last 39 years the awards have been celebrating healthcare excellence through huge political, technological and financial challenges within the sector. Through a rigorous, fair and transparent judging process the awards produce a roll call of the best organisations, teams and people in the NHS and the wider health sector.
ABOUT HSJ
Health Services Journal is the only title to cover all aspects of publicly funded healthcare, providing news, analysis, best practise information from some of the most powerful and respected figures in health. The HSJ audience is formed of healthcare leaders from both clinical and non-clinical backgrounds and both public and private sectors.
HSJ is published by Wilmington PLC, a company dedicated to providing information and training to professional business markets. Their publications across the Health, Risk and Compliance, Finance, Legal and Insight sectors are united by one common aim- to turn knowledge into advantage. Wilmington PLC enables professionals to enhance performance and innovation by providing high quality, relevant and reliable information, education and knowledge.