Global healthcare data technology company, Prospection, and leading Asia-Pacific biotech specialist CRO, Novotech Health Holdings, announce an strategic partnership to combine the power of real world evidence and clinical trials to get medicines to patients faster.  The partnership includes an investment by Novotech in Prospection.

Under the partnership, Prospection will become a technology partner of Novotech, providing its proprietary real world data analytics to support clinical trial feasibility assessment, execution and recruitment in the Asia-Pacific region.

“Real world evidence has reached a value inflection point becoming broadly accepted and increasingly utilised by regulatory authorities, as we’ve seen with its application to help manage COVID-19. The combination of our real world data analytics with Novotech’s clinical development expertise and footprint across the Asia-Pacific region brings together two nimble companies focused on generating evidence to support healthcare innovation and ultimately improve health outcomes for patients,” said CEO Eric Chung.

“By making an investment in Prospection and entering into this partnership, Novotech will add best-in-class data and analytics capabilities to our existing region leading biotech-focused suite of services for our clients,” said Novotech CEO Dr John Moller. 

“Driven by Prospection’s data analytics, our clients would benefit from more accurate patient identification, faster patient recruitment, compressed trial timelines and analytics capabilities to power real world clinical trials,” he added.

Prospection uses advanced analytics and AI algorithms to follow millions of patients over time to search for patterns in their health and the effectiveness of therapeutic journeys which can be harnessed in phase 4 studies. It can produce real world evidence in weeks that would have otherwise taken years to collect and analyse in a clinical trial.

Equally important, the partnership will help speed up trial design and feasibility as well as patient recruitment into trials. Patient recruitment can be one of the biggest hurdles in developing medicines, particularly in complex trials or when looking for patients within disease sub-segments or with rare diseases. 

Prospection’s analytics technology ingests de-identified patient data from varied sources, including healthcare providers and health records. This enables it to geolocate trial investigators or study sites with patients meeting the study criteria, thereby identifying locations for high recruitment potential. 

As part of the partnership, Novotech has made a minority equity investment in Prospection. This follows Prospection’s $45m Series B round in September 2021.