Lethal Lag Time: Concerns, Possible Solutions
November 24, 2009
In a follow up from yesterday’s post, I came across an article in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute on a drug funding issue force one of the major cooperative oncology groups to modify how they approach clinical trials. The article, titled,
“Costly Cancer Drugs Trigger Proposals To Modify Clinical Trial Design” notes a new drug costing up to $9000 per month per patient. In doing the economic analysis using formulas like Quality Adjust Life Years (QALYs), the real value of these treatments is being questioned.
On the brighter side, two potential solutions to long lag times for research are a search tool and a predictive modeling tool.
- explorys is a new spin off from the Cleveland Clinic which “enables users to collaborate, search, and tag meaningful correlations from treatments and outcomes within patient populations while maintaining security and privacy.” Hoping to get a demo soon.
- Archimedes Model which is reviewed recently in Business Week
and in Wired Magazine this month. which is a predictive modeling tool which is a full-scale simulation model of human physiology, diseases, behaviors, interventions, and healthcare systems.
