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JANUARY 2022 / $5
Transport Teams Within Hospitals Reduce Risks and Ease Staffing Shortages The First Team of its Kind in Alabama By Laura Freeman
The CRS team has a paramedic with each move.
Threading the narrow space between life and death, critical patients often need MRIs, CAT scans, X-Rays and specialized procedures that require them to be moved within the hospital. They are at their most vulnerable during these moves. Something as simple
as a change in oxygen pressure can trigger a decline that could tip the balance. “For staff new to critical care, or anyone who doesn’t move patients often, keeping track of so many essential elements can be daunting. There’s (CONTINUED ON PAGE 6)
Adding Color to Clinical Studies By Jane
ehrhardt
Tiffany Whitlow and Dale Smith.
Clinical trials in the U.S. will soon more accurately represent people who will utilize the treatments, thanks in part to a Birmingham company. Currently, on average, less than 10 percent of clinical research populations include minority participants. Yet according to the latest national census, 42.2 percent of Americans are minorities. This misrepresentation in clinical trials leads to incomplete data for doctors to work with when treating patients because medications can act differently among races. For instance, albuterol, the most commonly prescribed bronchodilator in the world, showed diminished effectiveness in 47 percent
of African-American and 67 percent of Puerto Rican children. But twice as many black children have the disease as white children. Acclinate, which was founded by Tiffany Whitlow and Dale Smith, wants to help solve this problem. “We want to provide pharmaceutical companies with better data so they have better research,” says Whitlow, who serves as the development officer. “We are not a clinical trial recruitment firm. Instead, we focus on building relationships with the black community. Our company works to educate and engage the population that researchers need in clinical trials.” On the flip side, Acclinate works
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with biopharmaceutical companies and contract research organizations to help them understand that their current process doesn’t include the entire spectrum of possible patients, along with advising companies on how to make changes. “We are the partner who helps them make these operational changes and make them sustainable,” Whitlow says. “And they’re able to use our technology to find out who is most likely to participate and/ or which clinical trial sites might yield the type of return they’re looking for.” The technology is a HIPAA-compliant database, dubbed EDICT which stands for Enhanced Diversity in Clinical Trials. “It’s like a heat map,” Whitlow says. “It shows where a population might be, how engaged they are, how (CONTINUED ON PAGE 10)
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