Let’s face it, the clinical trial world is overwhelming, especially if you have recently been diagnosed with a disease. ClinWiki.org is a nonprofit foundation whose mission is to make clinical trials more transparent and approachable. ClinWiki works with various stakeholders across many therapeutic areas in order to invite collaboration into a space that was previously siloed. Their efforts allow clinical research teams, sponsor companies, and patients recognize that we are all working towards the same end: effective treatments and cures for the diseases that plague our population.
The ClinWiki ALS project began in December 2019 and is projected to continue through October 2020. Natalie Fernandez, CFO and Program Director at MOFF, is the ALS Team Project Leader. She will be working in collaboration with Amy Westermann, the Executive Director at ClinWiki, and Sheri Strahl, COO of ALSA GW to complete the project. The project goal is to orient ClinWiki to the ALS community and emphasize the priorities of ALS patients as they search for clinical trials.
ALS is a unique disease when it comes to clinical trials for many reasons. For starters, it is debilitating and fatal. These two facts alone make concepts such as traveling to trial sites, placebo controls, and the extremely long duration of clinical trials incredibly burdensome to people living with the disease. The role of ALSA GW and MOFF is to help format the ALS clinical trial search in such away that highlights the important aspects of the trial so that people living with ALS do not spend months sifting through the data on clinicaltrials.gov. Enrollment criteria such as ALS onset, Forced Vital Capacity, and disease duration are just some of the tags being created in order to make the trials easier to sift through. Some key questions that will be highlighted are listed below.
- Does this trial offer Expanded Access?
- Does this trial offer Open Label Extension (OLE)?
- Is travel required?
- Does this trial offer remote monitoring?
Natalie is very excited to be working on this project. Stay tuned for the official launch in Fall 2020!
