If you have been diagnosed with cancer, you may be eligible to participate in a clinical trial. But, what is a clinical trial? Am I eligible to participate? What are the benefits? What does it involve? Do I have to pay?
These are some of the questions we discuss in this week’s episode with Danielle Ralic. Danielle is a technologist and her career has revolved working on solving tech problems in healthcare. Her passion is to use technology to improve quality of care and making healthcare accessible to all.
Clinical trials are research studies used to investigate a particular drug or surgical intervention. This is the only way we can test whether a new drug or surgical intervention works and is safe to use. But, finding out about clinical trials can be difficult. If there is a trial that you may be eligible to participate in, the doctor looking after you may discuss it with you. However, the landscape of clinical trials is forever changing. One minute a trial is open, the next it may have stopped recruiting. In addition, new clinical trials appear all the time, and keeping abreast with all of these can be tricky.
You may want to do your own research on clinical trials, and there are some really good websites that list all the trials that may be suitable for you to participate in. But, doing this on your own can be overwhelming.
When she learnt about the difficulties and the challenges some patients have been faced in finding out about clinical trials, Danielle thought of creating a solution. She co-founded Ancora.ai, a platform that aims to use technology and a patient-first approach to democratise access to clinical trials and improve the trial experience.
As well as clinical trials, we also talked about the impact of the pandemic on health care in general and how technology has been embraced allowing more adaptive working. It was a fascinating conversation and one I am sure you will enjoy.
You can connect with Danielle:
By email daneille@ancora.ai.
You can also connect with Danielle on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Check out their website too where you can find all sorts of useful information.
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Do you want to learn more about how meditation can help in breast cancer recovery? Listen here and enjoy my conversation with Kath Elliott.
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