Mayo Clinic’s Clinical Trials Beyond Walls initiative is revolutionizing the way clinical trials are conducted by leveraging telehealth, remote assessments, and other hospital-at-home innovations to bring trial aspects into patient homes or local communities. This initiative, made possible through pilot funding and informed by user experience research, aims to make participation in clinical trials more accessible and convenient for patients.
Decentralized clinical trials have been on the rise even before the COVID-19 pandemic, but the public health crisis accelerated this trend. Mayo Clinic’s team, including Rebecca Kottschade, Dr. Tufia Haddad, and Dr. Ugur Sener, have been at the forefront of reimagining clinical trials and taking them beyond traditional research facilities.
During the upcoming HIMSS25 educational session, titled “Decentralizing Clinical Trials into Homes: A Case Study,” the Mayo Clinic team will present their evaluation of a therapeutic intervention in patients who have received radiation therapy for brain tumors. This case study will showcase the use of virtual care, remote neurological exams, in-home phlebotomy, and decentralized drug distribution in the Neuro-Oncology Anywhere clinical trial.
Mayo Clinic’s progress in decentralized clinical trials has been significant. They have empowered study teams and investigators with support to integrate decentralized capabilities seamlessly. The program has evolved from strategy to pilot implementation and now full-scale execution, making decentralized trials a standard across Mayo Clinic. The team has focused on enhancing participant engagement, optimizing workflows, advancing data governance, and simplifying the user experience for all stakeholders.
The core objectives of Mayo Clinic’s program include optimizing the participant and study team experience, expanding access, improving inclusion, and scaling adoption of decentralized capabilities. Early data shows growing adoption of decentralized capabilities and increased trial participation by patients outside Mayo Clinic sites, indicating progress in improving access and diversity in clinical trials.
The case study presentation at HIMSS25 will demonstrate the real-world impact of decentralized capabilities in an oncology clinical trial, showcasing how these innovations are transforming clinical trial participation for cancer patients. By reducing the need for in-person visits, Clinical Trials Beyond Walls is breaking down barriers and enabling more patients to contribute to groundbreaking research.
Overall, Mayo Clinic’s pioneering work in decentralized clinical trials is shaping the future of patient-centered clinical research. Attendees of the HIMSS25 session will gain valuable insights into how decentralized approaches are improving trial accessibility and advancing healthcare research.
Andrea Fox, Senior Editor of Healthcare IT News, will be covering the session at HIMSS25. For more information on this initiative and other healthcare IT news, stay tuned to Healthcare IT News, a HIMSS Media publication.
