PRA Health Sciences and Deep Lens announce strategic relationship to accelerate patient recruitment for precision cancer trials

RALEIGH, N.C. and COLUMBUS, Ohio, Sept. 18, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PRA Health Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: PRAH) and Deep Lens, Inc., announced today a new strategic relationship to accelerate patient access and recruitment for oncology clinical trials. The relationship brings together best-in-class technologies that improve the identification, screening, and matching of cancer patients to precision-based clinical oncology trials on a global basis, with the combined solution being deployed to Microsoft Azure.

Deep Lens’ award-winning VIPER^TM patient screening platform is a breakthrough technology deployed by cancer centers, integrated delivery networks (IDNs), and community oncology networks to identify and match oncology patients to life saving clinical trials who would have otherwise fallen through the cracks and missed the opportunity to enroll. The differentiated technology and services model allows Deep Lens to deploy its software at cancer centers and site networks on a global basis, free of charge, to better give patients access to the therapies they need and deserve – while providing significant value by accelerating study timelines and bringing game-changing therapies to market sooner.

“More than 14,000 oncology trials are currently recruiting patients, but estimates are that only three to five percent of eligible patients actually participate,” said Kent Thoelke, Chief Scientific Officer at PRA Health Sciences. “The challenges facing clinical trial recruitment are multifaceted, and sponsors have been unable to determine where specific patients are in order to match them to studies -- that is about to change. Using Deep Lens’ VIPER technology, the patient identification process will be streamlined by instantly analyzing data within electronic health records, pathology systems and genomic profiles to enable matching of cancer patients with suitable clinical trials.” 

The combined effort between PRA and Deep Lens brings a critical advancement to clinical trial matching to more efficiently connect eligible patients with potential clinical trials by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning via the VIPER platform.

How the VIPER Integration Works

VIPER enables cancer care teams, clinical trial sponsors and trial coordinators to immediately and automatically match patients based on the genetic profile of their cancers to the best precision therapies and oncology clinical trials.

VIPER is a HIPAA-compliant public cloud service that accesses data “behind the firewall” at participating sites and automatically ingests data from pathology systems at the time of diagnosis, and from electronic medical records and genetic test results from top genetic testing labs globally. VIPER acts as an AI-driven screening platform for research coordinators and care teams, while the de-identified data helps sponsors identify where in the process patients are being identified, where they may be disqualified and why they may or may not have enrolled in a trial once qualified. Currently, there is no workflow solution on the market that captures granular data about patients in their care continuum.

Once patients have been qualified for trials, the VIPER system will refer those patients to PRA’s industry leading Mobile Health Platform, also deployed on Azure, to provide an end-to-end patient-centric screening and trial management experience for providers globally.

The combination of VIPER’s artificial intelligence solution, workflow design, communication optimization and the research coordination services provides sponsors and research sites the best opportunity to connect the right patient, to the right trial, at the right time – it’s realization of personalized medicine.

“This will really move the needle in cancer research, and it will allow community oncology networks to compete with their much larger competitors at academic medical centers and comprehensive cancer centers,” Thoelke said. “With Microsoft Azure behind PRA and Deep Lens, we believe this relationship could create a game-changing model in cancer research, not only for patient screening but for the development of just-in-time networks and other new business models.”

“Deep Lens has grown dramatically with unique cloud technology and a business model that takes risk out of its deployment, and it has taken the vision of PRA to see the potential for a truly unique solution to come to market,” said Simon Arkell, Co-founder and President at Deep Lens. “With a global, industry-leading partner like PRA collaborating with Microsoft, we expect to exponentially grow our global footprint while dramatically increasing the success rates in oncology research. In turn, this will allow trial sponsors full visibility into the patient screening process so they can get their treatments to market much faster. Together, we will continue our mission to find the right patients for the right trials at the right time.”

About PRA Health Sciences

PRA Health Sciences is one of the world’s leading global contract research organizations by revenue, providing outsourced clinical development and data solution services to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. PRA’s global clinical development platform includes more than 75 offices across North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, South Africa, Australia and the Middle East and more than 17,500 employees worldwide. Since 2000, PRA has participated in approximately 4,000 clinical trials worldwide. In addition, PRA has participated in the pivotal or supportive trials that led to U.S. Food and Drug Administration or international regulatory approval of more than 95 drugs. To learn more about PRA, please visit www.prahs.com.

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About Deep Lens

Deep Lens is a software company focused on a groundbreaking approach to faster recruitment of the best-suited cancer patients to clinical trials. By identifying patients at the time of diagnosis and combining lab, EMR, and genomic data, VIPER, Deep Lens’ integrated cloud platform, provides care teams with visibility and workflows to accelerate recruitment and compress study timelines to bring game-changing therapies to market sooner. Growing with sponsors, providers, and strategic partners, Deep Lens challenges the status quo so that patients can get the therapies they want and deserve. For more information, visit www.deeplens.ai.

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