World Cancer Day 2020: Progress Has Been Made – But We Can Do Better

World Cancer Day is a chance for global communities to unite, to show solidarity and pledge to work together to defeat this devastating disease. It’s also an opportunity to celebrate – we know more about cancer than ever before thanks to incredible breakthroughs in new medicines, advances in surgery and increasing scientific knowledge.

The American Cancer Society has reported that cancer death rates in the United States alone fell 2.2% from 2016 to 2017 – that’s the largest single-year decline in cancer mortality ever reported. And cervical cancer could be eliminated by the end of this century, according to The Lancet, if cervical screening and HPV vaccination programs are scaled-up to 80%-100% coverage over the next 50 years.

On one hand the decline can be linked to lifestyle changes, with smoking cessation contributing to the drop in the cancer mortality rate – lung cancer accounts for nearly one-quarter of all cancer deaths. But improved cancer detection tools such as new imaging technologies and less invasive surgical approaches have also played their roles. The official World Cancer Day site estimates that up to 3.7 million lives could be saved each year by mobilizing resources for prevention, early detection and treatment.

Teckro’s Message on World Cancer Day, February 4, 2020

While we celebrate the breakthroughs made so far, the truth is that millions of people across the world will continue to die from cancer because new medicines are taking too long to get to market. Also, more than half of doctors who run their first clinical trials will never run another, meaning that patients’ access to trials are limited and therefore, so is the search for a cure.

This is why our message on World Cancer Day 2020 is that we can do better. Much better.

Clinical trials are stuck in another time, the burden on investigators and trial sites is increasing – which is quite extraordinary considering this technological era when we’re all so obsessed with speed and instant results! The cumbersome nature of the protocol puts physicians off participating and slows down progress when it comes to defeating serious diseases like cancer.

We’re proud that Teckro is leading the way in changing this reality. Our machine learning solution is currently being used to support more than 7,100 oncology research sites around the world. An impressive 77% percent of registered users are active on Teckro ­– and it’s not required, so they are consciously choosing to use Teckro because it brings so much value to them.

Our user numbers are only going up, as monitors, research staff and study teams across the world realize how Teckro can help them. We’ve seen a 336% increase in the number of answers provided by Teckro to oncology research staff since 2017. Patients are enrolled faster and there are fewer deviations from the protocol – two key factors that speed up the trial process, improve safety and can bring life-saving drugs to market quicker.

Simplifying Clinical Trials

Study coordinators use Teckro to answer questions about patient eligibility in seconds by searching digitized content instead of flipping through paper protocols or contacting monitors where precious time is lost waiting for answers. Only the current, approved version of the protocol is searchable at any given time, meaning that patients won’t be enrolled under the wrong version. If during a cancer trial a dangerous side effect needs to be treated, Teckro provides immediate access to vital information on how to diagnose and treat the symptoms.

We believe that this advanced way of managing trials is a huge step towards eradicating cancer. By increasing awareness of Teckro across the globe and changing behavior and attitudes, our aim is for Teckro to become synonymous with clinical trials – for “I’ll just Teckro that” to be the words of every clinical trial stakeholder in the world. This is how the fight against cancer can be won.