Blog 3 minute read

Are clinical trial innovation opportunities getting lost in translation?

It’s a tale as old as the global clinical trial itself. You have a study and need global solutions. To meet the needs of every patient, global trials require translations for everything a patient might see. To that end, consent, questionnaires, engagement content, reminders, and more must be translated appropriately. Translations are crucial to all aspects of the trial. As such, translations demand more than basic fluency. They require an understanding of cultural and linguistic nuances, significant technological capability, and a tremendous amount of resource support.

All too often, from far too many vendors, translations seem like little more than an afterthought in planning. Lack of planning can result in a range of additional problems for submissions and global rollouts. You might expect something this critical would get much attention for innovation, and you wouldn’t be alone. However, this isn’t the case. In fact, over the last ten years, ePRO translation timelines, costs, and general management have evolved very little. For the most part, though, the ePRO/eCOA market has simply addressed translations as a straight service-based solution tracking to a finish line. Firstly, you get the materials required by the protocol and send them out to a Language Service Provider for translation. Once you get those translated materials back, they’re loaded electronically and finally deployed for sites and patients. For decades this process has been broken and inefficient.

How we solve the Translations challenge

At Datacubed Health, we are doing things differently. We view translations as an incredible opportunity for innovation. As an ePRO/eCOA and Patient Engagement provider delivering solutions for decentralized trials with additional platform capabilities, we’re deploying studies that span the world in numerous languages. And in the interest of furthering access to healthcare for everyone everywhere, we will change how the industry thinks about translations. We address the questions of time, cost, and quality in translation delivery.    

But what will success look like in a translation solution when aiming to reach such a diverse group of patient populations, and how will we achieve it?

Step one, get the right person with the passion for change and the expertise to deliver on it. To that end, Datacubed Health has brought on Tracey Larrow, Senior Director of Translation Architecture. Tracey brings more than a decade of experience in translation, localization, and related support and a commitment to translation innovation with fresh and strategic thinking.

Under her leadership, we’re exploring new and better ways to facilitate the translation and localization process. Our primary goal? Higher efficiency, lower cost, and uncompromising quality.

In my next two blog posts, we’ll explore the specifics of the service model we’ll implement and the innovations we’re developing. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Tracey or me to learn more.