monARC Bionetworks, a healthcare technology company,  announced that it has initiated a strategic integration with the drug development platform of Roivant Sciences, a global biopharmaceutical company focused on reducing the time and cost of the drug development process.

monARC's multi-disciplinary team of drug developers and technology experts have built disease-specific patient network applications and online tools that prequalify and engage patients during protocol development prior to study initiation. They have also developed a suite of digital apps, back-end architecture, and telemedicine capabilities to reduce site visits and enable completely virtual clinical trials.

This integrated platform has been crafted to accelerate patient enrollment, improve site selection, reduce protocol amendments, decrease patient dropout rates, permit rapid experimentation with novel apps and devices, and ensure that individuals in remote and underserved communities can participate in clinical trials. monARC's current customers include academic researchers, biopharmaceutical companies, and medical device manufacturers.

In a pilot programme, monARC's platforms yielded clinical trial enrollment 20 times faster than industry benchmarks in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and ensured 90% adherence from elderly patients using digital data collection tools like Bluetooth-connected spirometers, weight scales, and activity watches.

"Our core strategy of putting patients first has reduced clinical research timelines," said Komathi Stem, Founder and CEO of monARC. "Roivant shares our passion for improving the process of developing new medicines for patients, and we are delighted to partner with Roivant as we expand the scope of our work."

"At Roivant, we are constantly iterating and improving how we run clinical trials across our family of companies to enhance the patient experience, minimize time and risk, and generate higher quality data," said Dan Rothman, chief information officer of Roivant.

"Roivant's drug development team supports the companies in our family as they develop innovative medicines in their respective therapeutic areas," said William T. Symonds, PharmD, chief development officer at Roivant. "monARC's capabilities will enhance the design and conduct of our own clinical trials, as well as trials conducted by other companies and institutions."

With Roivant's strategic investment, monARC can expand its patient research networks into additional diseases including atopic dermatitis, obesity, and diabetes to help meet growing customer and patient demand.

Mr. Rothman and Wasim Malik, PhD, chief digital strategist at Roivant, will be joining monARC's board of directors and Roivant will collaborate with monARC on five disease areas where companies in the Roivant family are currently conducting clinical research.

monARC is on a mission to modernize the clinical research industry by empowering patients to share their data and participate anytime, anywhere. It is the first company to develop a proprietary Smart Health Record, consolidating patient data from Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and other sources including mobile apps into a metadata-rich record that informs study protocol design and provides pre-screening analytics capabilities for clinical trials.

Roivant Sciences is a global biopharmaceutical company focused on reducing the time and cost of the drug development process to improve the lives of patients and their families.