Johns Hopkins Medicine says it will use a $24.5 million grant to continue operating its trial innovation Center, which is designed to improve NIH-funded studies.
The grant, from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), will help expand the range of tools available to researchers according to Daniel Hanley, division director of the BIOS Clinical Trials Coordinating Center (BIOS CTCC) and TIC leader.
“We are excited to have NCATS support to continue our work to improve investigator-initiated clinical trials by providing new methods, designs and operational tools that make it easier to complete clinical trials.
“We hope this award will help grow the number of trials that are performed nationally, and that the quality of those trials’ results will lead to nationwide dissemination of the trial planning and operational processes that we have developed and will continue to develop over the next five years,” Hanley said.
The ultimate aim of the TIC is to make drug research faster. To help achieve this, the team works to improve participant engagement, intervention adherence and measurement of trial endpoints.
Benefits of innovative approaches developed by the TIC are measured using explicit efficiency- and quality-focused metrics.
The organization claimed that in its first seven years, the TIC team developed and demonstrated new methods for multi-center trials, including an accelerated start-up program, gamification in clinical trial operations and AI-enhanced patient screening.
The TIC has benefited from close collaboration between BIOS CTCC and the Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. And, according to Daniel Ford, senior associate dean and director of the institute, the grant will strengthen this relationship.
“With this award, Johns Hopkins can continue to lead in helping research teams accomplish clinical trials with faster speed, efficient use of funding and more authentic patient engagement. In addition, we will train a cohort of young investigators to give them the skills needed to take on the challenge of large clinical trials.”
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