We just wrapped up another exciting and packed day of DIA 2022, tearing down informational boundaries and working together to positively impact patient lives around the world. The COVID-19 global pandemic has certainly shed light on quite a few ways industry stakeholders need to strengthen collaborations to ensure drug development meets the needs of patients around the globe.

At a time like no other in our history, we experienced a renewed focus from the collective industry to embrace innovation and better address gaps in diversity and inclusion in clinical trials for underrepresented communities. Several of today’s discussions specifically focused on strategic ways to address barriers to participation in trials:

• Vice President of the Analytics Center of Excellence at IQVIA Lucas Glass participated in the “Approaches to Addressing Diversity and Inclusion in Clinical Research”https://sched.co/vWRP session, where he joined a panel of experts to help attendees identify specific barriers to sufficient patient representation in clinical trials and to share his recommendations on how sponsors can leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to better inform trial site selection and optimize enrollment among diverse patient populations. By using principles of fairness in ML, AI can help to improve trial participation and proportionate representation.
• During the “Leveraging Real-World Evidence (RWE) to Address Diversity Gaps in Randomized Clinical Trials: Regulatory, Clinical and Other Considerations” DIAmond session, IQVIA’s Chief Scientific Officer Nancy Dreyer chaired a panel discussion among fellow research and development experts to highlight how the lack of diversity in trials can impact the reliability of evidence-based care algorithms and to provide attendees with insight how RWE can supplement randomized clinical trials to fill evidence gaps and better address diversity. Additionally, as RWE is a hot topic for discussion at this year’s DIA, IQVIA also led an Innovation Theater presentation today on “RWE to Enhance Clinical Development”. IQVIA’s Medical Affairs Category Lead for Real World Evidence Barbara Isquith Arone joined Paul Petraro, global head of the Real World Evidence Analytic Center of Excellence at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, to showcase the new uses of RWE, including:
• Supporting trial design.
• Providing context for interventional studies.
• Helping to create practical approaches to the long term monitoring of cell and gene therapies.

Barbara shared how the growing acceptance of RWE in product development is moving quickly and when sponsors may want to consider its use to optimize their development processes.

So far, DIA 2022 has been an amazing experience for the IQVIA team, filled with many invaluable learnings and important dialogue with fellow attendees. Today’s thoughtful discussions emphasize how enhanced collaboration and transparency with each other in the industry can help ensure we all make a tangible difference in improving patients’ lives together.

As always, for DIA 2022 attendees and others interested in connecting with our experts to learn more about our innovative solutions, come by our IQVIA booth (#1300) and Q² Solutions booth (#1209) before the meeting ends tomorrow. We’d love to connect with you! While you’re there, feel free to experience one or more of the demo stations highlighting our solutions in decentralized trials, patient recruitment, drug discovery and development, electronic clinical outcome assessment (eCOA) and digital trial management and data analytics.

Cheers to another rewarding day at DIA!