-
Americas
-
Asia & Oceania
-
A-I
J-Z
EMEA Thought Leadership
Developing IQVIA’s positions on key trends in the pharma and life sciences industries, with a focus on EMEA.
Learn more -
Middle East & Africa
EMEA Thought Leadership
Developing IQVIA’s positions on key trends in the pharma and life sciences industries, with a focus on EMEA.
Learn more
Regions
-
Americas
-
Asia & Oceania
-
Europe
-
Middle East & Africa
-
Americas
-
Asia & Oceania
-
Europe
Europe
- Adriatic
- Belgium
- Bulgaria
- Czech Republic
- Deutschland
- España
- France
- Greece
- Hungary
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italia
EMEA Thought Leadership
Developing IQVIA’s positions on key trends in the pharma and life sciences industries, with a focus on EMEA.
Learn more -
Middle East & Africa
EMEA Thought Leadership
Developing IQVIA’s positions on key trends in the pharma and life sciences industries, with a focus on EMEA.
Learn more
SOLUTIONS
-
Research & Development
-
Real World Evidence
-
Commercialization
-
Safety & Regulatory Compliance
-
Technologies
LIFE SCIENCE SEGMENTS
HEALTHCARE SEGMENTS
- Information Partner Services
- Financial Institutions
- Global Public Health
- Government
- Patient Associations
- Payers
- Providers
THERAPEUTIC AREAS
- Cardiovascular
- Cell and Gene Therapy
- Central Nervous System
- GI & Hepatology
- Infectious Diseases and Vaccines
- Oncology
- Pediatrics
- Rare Diseases
- View All
Impacting People's Lives
"We strive to help improve outcomes and create a healthier, more sustainable world for people everywhere.
LEARN MORE
Harness the power to transform clinical development
Reimagine clinical development by intelligently connecting data, technology, and analytics to optimize your trials. The result? Faster decision making and reduced risk so you can deliver life-changing therapies faster.
Research & Development OverviewResearch & Development Quick Links
Real World Evidence. Real Confidence. Real Results.
Generate and disseminate evidence that answers crucial clinical, regulatory and commercial questions, enabling you to drive smarter decisions and meet your stakeholder needs with confidence.
REAL WORLD EVIDENCE OVERVIEWReal World Evidence Quick Links
See markets more clearly. Opportunities more often.
Elevate commercial models with precision and speed using AI-driven analytics and technology that illuminate hidden insights in data.
COMMERCIALIZATION OVERVIEWCommercialization Quick Links
Service driven. Tech-enabled. Integrated compliance.
Orchestrate your success across the complete compliance lifecycle with best-in-class services and solutions for safety, regulatory, quality and medical information.
COMPLIANCE OVERVIEWSafety & Regulatory Compliance Quick Links
Intelligence that transforms life sciences end-to-end.
When your destination is a healthier world, making intelligent connections between data, technology, and services is your roadmap.
TECHNOLOGIES OVERVIEWTechnology Quick Links
CLINICAL PRODUCTS
COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS
COMPLIANCE, SAFETY, REG PRODUCTS
BLOGS, WHITE PAPERS & CASE STUDIES
Explore our library of insights, thought leadership, and the latest topics & trends in healthcare.
DISCOVER INSIGHTSTHE IQVIA INSTITUTE
An in-depth exploration of the global healthcare ecosystem with timely research, insightful analysis, and scientific expertise.
SEE LATEST REPORTS
FEATURED INNOVATIONS
-
IQVIA Connected Intelligence™
-
IQVIA Healthcare-grade AI™
-
IQVIA AI Assistant
-
Human Data Science Cloud
-
IQVIA Innovation Hub
-
Decentralized Trials
-
Patient Experience Solutions with Apple devices
WHO WE ARE
- Our Story
- Our Impact
- Commitment to Public Health
- Code of Conduct
- Environmental Social Governance
- Privacy
- Executive Team
NEWS & RESOURCES
Unlock your potential to drive healthcare forward
By making intelligent connections between your needs, our capabilities, and the healthcare ecosystem, we can help you be more agile, accelerate results, and improve patient outcomes.
LEARN MORE
IQVIA AI is Healthcare-grade AI
Building on a rich history of developing AI for healthcare, IQVIA AI connects the right data, technology, and expertise to address the unique needs of healthcare. It's what we call Healthcare-grade AI.
LEARN MORE
Meet the IQVIA AI Assistant
Your new expert analyst is here. Be at the forefront of data-driven decision-making with a new generative AI tool that enables you to interact with our products and solutions like never before. Get results you can trust, faster.
LEARN MORE
Your healthcare data deserves more than just a cloud.
The IQVIA Human Data Science Cloud is our unique capability designed to enable healthcare-grade analytics, tools, and data management solutions to deliver fit-for-purpose global data at scale.
LEARN MORE
Innovations make an impact when bold ideas meet powerful partnerships
The IQVIA Innovation Hub connects start-ups with the extensive IQVIA network of assets, resources, clients, and partners. Together, we can help lead the future of healthcare with the extensive IQVIA network of assets, resources, clients, and partners.
LEARN MORE
Proven, faster DCT solutions
IQVIA Decentralized Trials deliver purpose-built clinical services and technologies that engage the right patients wherever they are. Our hybrid and fully virtual solutions have been used more than any others.
LEARN MORE
IQVIA Patient Experience Solutions with Apple devices
Empowering patients to personalize their healthcare and connecting them to caregivers has the potential to change the care delivery paradigm.
LEARN MOREWORKING AT IQVIA
Our mission is to accelerate innovation for a healthier world. Together, we can solve customer challenges and improve patient lives.
LEARN MORELIFE AT IQVIA
Careers, culture and everything in between. Find out what’s going on right here, right now.
LEARN MORE
WE’RE HIRING
"Improving human health requires brave thinkers who are willing to explore new ideas and build on successes. Unleash your potential with us.
SEARCH JOBSBlog
The Challenge with IBD
Nov 02, 2016
Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) affects millions of patients around the world, including a million people in the US and 2.5 million people in Europe. Yet efforts to combat these diseases have been frustrated in the past due to the complexity and cost associated with running clinical trials.
IBD covers a group of disorders, primarily including ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's Disease (CD), in which all or part of the patient’s digestive tract becomes inflamed. These conditions periodically “flare up” causing the patient severe diarrhea, pain, fatigue and/or weight loss, with the most severe cases leading to life-threatening complications. The lack of new treatments for these diseases has left a significant unmet medical need among IBD patients around the world.
For decades, physicians treated IBD flare-ups with steroids to trigger remission, but steroids have multiple negative side effects. Then in the late 90s, infliximab, a genetically engineered monoclonal antibody was approved to treat CD and later other IBD conditions. Today, in addition to other TNF α-antagonists, they are common first-line treatment option for patients with moderate/severe disease, though it can cost more than $20,000 per year with approximately one third of patients not responding to treatment and then one third of patients that do respond, losing the response within 1 year.
Infliximab continues to be the treatment of choice; however, a number of clinical research efforts have helped improve our understanding of these conditions with hopes of using this information to develop new and better treatment options. Over the past 10 years, we have seen significant progress in identifying genes for CD and UC to more proactively diagnose these conditions, technology for DNA sequencing has improved, and researchers have identified species and groups of bacteria that may be involved in IBD. We are also seeing several Phase II and Phase III trials underway to develop oral monoclonal antibody as well as oral non biologic small molecules that will make the treatment more convenient, and potentially safer as TNF α-antagonists have potential side effects such as infections and possible Lymphoma.
IBD also has a number of powerful patient advocacy groups, including The Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA), that are helping to drive this research forward by partnering with industry leaders and investing millions of dollars in projects.
Searching the globe for patients
The growing interest in developing new drugs for IBD is also making these trials more challenging to deliver. It is a hugely competitive landscape, with many competing studies actively recruiting. Adding to the challenge are the limited number of treatment-naive patients with IBD (patients who have never undergone treatment for their condition), because biologics such as infliximab, adalimumab and vedolizumab are readily available first-line treatment option that are usually reimbursed, making it an easy choice for physicians and patients. That means even when researchers find treatment-naive patients, they may be unwilling to participate in a study that may land them in a placebo group.
Unfortunately, there are no simple answers to this situation. The best hope for many trial sponsors is to work with a partner that has deep expertise in and specific experience addressing IBD research, and the industry data to identify which trial sites around the world are most likely to have access to these patient populations. Even if a trial is targeting a specific country or region, a good partner can help them identify the local thought leaders, physicians, and patient advocates who are linked to these patient populations, and may be able to identify those who are interested in clinical research as a treatment option.
We have also found success working with advocacy groups to build online registries for their members to educate them about their disease and allow them to register their interest in taking part in a trial. This not only helps the sponsor engage with the local patient community, it also acts as a prescreening tool to focus recruiting efforts on patients who have already shown an interest in the process.
When choosing these partners, sponsors should be sure their team has expertise in the regulatory environment related to IBD and understand how best to capture real-world data through registries and observational studies to support their research and build a strong case for the safety and efficacy of their treatments.
Even with a great partner, recruiting for these trials will continue to be a challenge, but those sponsors who are able to overcome these obstacles have an opportunity to address a significant healthcare gap. IBD patients around the world are in need of innovative new treatments to better manage or eliminate their symptoms and improve their quality of life. The companies that are able to bring drugs to market to address this need promise to impact millions of lives worldwide.