Dell Medical School will serve as the key academic partner on two new clinical research projects to help standardize clinical trials, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary, announced Sept. 30.
The University was awarded two new contracts from the Advanced Research Projects Agency, a program launched by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The “Simulation-augmented, Real-time Platform Adaptive Seamless Trials” (SURPASS) initiative is funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, and the Dell Medical School is taking part in two of its new initiatives, said Dr. Nilay Shah, chief strategy officer for Dell Med.
STACK and COMMONS are the two new initiatives that are both aimed at modernizing the clinical trials process. The STACK project seeks to expand the number of clinics that can host clinical trials by making resources that hospitals can use to onboard clinical trial participants.
The COMMONS initiative will create a national information database for clinical researchers to use. Dell Med will be the first school to partner with the COMMONS project.
Shah said Dell Med’s involvement is in standardizing hospital procedures to shorten the time needed to start a research project, which can currently take 12-18 months.
Shah said they are also focused on quicker recruiting for patients and are looking for patients who are not typically offered clinical trials. Dell Med is also aiming to speed up the process and standardize data collection, Shah said.
“We intend to make the United States a place where researchers can run rigorous trials efficiently,” Kennedy said.
The school was awarded the funding after submitting a solution summary, which Shah said took a patient-centered approach. Shah wants the new program to make it easier for patients to participate in clinical trials across a spectrum of studies, as opposed to a few specific types of research study.
“Right now the focus is broad; we want to build the infrastructure,” Shah said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to do clinical trials for diabetes or heart failure with drugs, or if you’re trying to do it with devices, or even as we move into the AI space, AI-related clinical trials.”
