Cambridge Cognition launches AQUA to automate quality assurance in CNS trials using speech analysis
October 26, 2023 – Clinical Trials – AQUA, CNS clinical trials, Cambridge Cognition
25 October 2023 — Cambridge, UK — Cambridge Cognition, a leader in digital health solutions for brain health assessment, announces the launch of AQUA, an automated quality assurance solution for Central Nervous System (CNS) clinical trials. Using automated speech analysis technology, AQUA objectively reviews recorded patient assessments and may enhance accuracy and reduce the cost of quality by 50%.
Quality assurance is an essential requirement under ‘Good Clinical Practice’ guidelines for clinical trials. In CNS trials, for example, for Alzheimer’s disease or Schizophrenia, a clinician or rater may subjectively score a patient’s answers to questions about behavior or function. Then quality assurance is carried out by expert clinicians, for example, senior consultant neurologists or psychologists, who will identify errors by listening to usually 10% to 20% of patient assessments. This system can be very costly and may take weeks.
AQUA uses advanced voice technology developed by Winterlight to conduct quality assurance more quickly, economically and accurately. AQUA can assess every single patient consultation and provide a structured report to the pharmaceutical company within hours, not weeks. The product is available in nine languages for several widely used CNS clinical instruments already and is adaptable for almost all. AQUA has an AI engine that can also confirm that the same patient is in each subsequent consultation. The errors can be addressed following standard clinical trial procedures.
Professor John Harrison, chief scientific officer at Scottish Brain Sciences and an advocate for the automation of quality assurance within CNS clinical trials, underscores the pressing need for transformative advancements: “Automation offers a promising opportunity for enhancing data integrity and capturing qualitative data relevant to questions of clinical relevance. This approach also offers a solution to the challenges surrounding quality assurance. Looking to the future, I anticipate most rater-administered scales will incorporate immediate, automated feedback. AQUA marks a significant leap forward for clinical trials, instilling greater confidence in the consistent scoring of scales and precise adherence to administration guidelines.”
With AQUA, pharmaceutical companies can be more confident that the data from their clinical trial is accurate and can reduce the cost of quality. They can address problems, such as off-script questioning or inaccurate scoring, with a particular clinical trial site within hours. Then, when making a new drug application, they have reports from every single patient consultation as evidence for regulators of appropriate quality adherence.
Cambridge Cognition has conducted its own trial comparing non-experts using AQUA with expert clinicians, showing that there was a high degree of correlation. Using these results, the company has already secured a lead customer for AQUA, and the solution will be used for the first time in a phase 2 clinical trial for Alzheimer’s disease that is starting later in 2023.
Cambridge Cognition’s CEO, Matthew Stork, stated, “We are delighted to be launching AQUA. We believe this is groundbreaking, and the potential use is widespread. Whenever a clinician is asking questions to a patient in a clinical trial, we can now offer an automated solution to provide a report on every single consultation, and we can do that at half the cost of the current method.”
To learn more about how AQUA can help identify inconsistencies in your CNS data and scale review processes, visit https://cambridgecognition.com/aqua-automated-quality-assurance-for-clinical-scales/
About Cambridge Cognition
Cambridge Cognition is a technology company developing digital health products to better understand, detect and treat conditions affecting brain health. The company’s software products assess cognitive health in patients worldwide to improve clinical trial outcomes, identify and stratify patients early and improve global efficiency in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.
For further information, visit www.cambridgecognition.com
