As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to limit movement all over the world, clinical trials have had to adapt by leveraging methodologies typically associated with hybrid or remote clinical trial designs. The alternative would be to suspend the trial and interrupt care for enrolled patients, something that according to NPR, has been done to more than 400 studies since March 1, 2020.
To help keep trials active and patients engaged during trial disruption, Greenphire, the global leader in financial software for clinical trials, announced that it has enhanced its award-winning payment and reimbursement solution, ClinCard, to include additional capabilities to support decentralized clinical trials due to COVID-19 interruptions.
“As the landscape for clinical trials evolves, we’re beginning to see a need for remote payment capabilities. We heard from over 1,800 site personnel and over 80% said that providing a small payment following a virtual visit would improve the likelihood of participants staying in a clinical trial,” said Kyle Cunningham, Chief Product Officer of Greenphire. “It’s of utmost importance to keep clinical trials running in this uncertain time. As a company dedicated to removing barriers to both sites and patients, we’re thrilled to offer these new capabilities for our ClinCard solution so that patients can stay engaged and enrolled in trials and sites can continue their critical work.”
ClinCard is the industry-leading method for automated participant payment and reimbursement. Approaching nine million payments executed worldwide, ClinCard supports global clinical research with the flexibility to offer a reloadable prepaid debit card solution or direct deposit in local currency to participants. The recent ClinCard enhancements include:
Data-Triggered Payments – Participant reimbursements can be processed in the office or remotely through ClinCard’s data-triggered payments capability. An open API enables integration with any data provider that supports an event-driven scenario (e.g., EDC, IXRS, CTMS, ePRO, eCOA, etc.), streamlining the reimbursement process for improved engagement, compliance and retention. This offering allows for milestone payments, such as a micropayments, to be completed in real time based on pre-determined event schedules, maximizing protocol compliance and without any administrative burden for sites.
Direct-to-Patient Card Shipments – Clinical trial participants are now able to receive ClinCards mailed directly to their homes, which can be especially valuable in support of fully remote trial scenarios. ClinCard also enables expense reimbursement tracking, including notes for virtual receipts, such as childcare, driving a more efficient and centralized reimbursement process.
“Virtual or hybrid clinical trials have been talked about for some time, but today’s pandemic has brought the digital trial format from a slowly emerging concept to an approach that can provide essential utility for patients and sites alike – especially during difficult times as we’re experiencing today,” said Zach Hales, Product Manager at Greenphire. “Understanding this need, we advanced our product roadmap to help patients stay active in trials and enable sites to continue to collect vital data.”
In addition to these new enhancements to ClinCard, Greenphire also recently announced additional capabilities to ConneX, our global clinical trial patient travel solution. ConneX Patient Direct offers “clean transport” for medications, equipment and healthcare professionals to visit patients in their homes, enabling patients to receive much-needed medications and monitoring, and sites and sponsors to continue their trials without disruption. Together, Greenphire’s ClinCard and ConneX direct-to-patient solution enhancements help to support decentralized trials, ensuring patient engagement and convenience.
