PPD Extends Digital Clinical Trial Capabilities to Support Biopharma Companies’ Research Continuity and Patient Safety during COVID-19 Pandemic

WILMINGTON, N.C.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–PPD, Inc. (Nasdaq:PPD), a leading global contract research organization, has extended its digital clinical trial solutions to support biopharma companies’ research continuity initiatives and to help ensure patient safety as part of its integrated response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

PPD’s extensive, flexible suite of digital trial solutions – from electronic patient consent to telehealth to hybrid and fully decentralized/virtual trials – enables biopharmaceutical customers to advance their current and planned clinical research programs.

The coronavirus pandemic poses increasing challenges to the design and conduct of clinical studies, particularly the inability of some patients to visit impacted research sites when subject to government stay-at-home orders or to avoid exposure risk. As part of the company’s long-term digital strategy, PPD is collaborating with customers, regulatory authorities and business partners to deploy innovative digital and virtual solutions.

“The pandemic’s impact is driving a new consensus that the need is now for expanded use of digitally enabled trials,” said Niklas Morton, PPD’s senior vice president, digital services. “Our flexible customer solutions across the digital spectrum are designed to increase trial-participation access for patients and enhance their experience, resulting in time-efficiency and data-quality improvements for our customers. In today’s challenging environment, our digital solutions can contribute to minimizing trial disruptions and helping our customers keep their drug development programs on track.”

PPD’s investments in developing new clinical study models are designed to improve the patient experience by reducing the number of in-person visits in favor of remote and digitally enabled study participation. The company’s service offerings combine operational solutions such as direct-to-patient and direct-from-patient models incorporating home health care nursing, study drug administration, sample collection and the pickup and return of study materials; and digital solutions such as eConsent, telemedicine, devices/wearables and electronic clinical outcome assessments (eCOA), including electronic patient reported outcomes (ePRO).

In quick response to the impact of COVID-19 on ongoing studies, PPD has invested in and collaborated with Medable and Science 37, two of the industry’s leaders in virtual trials, and is rapidly deploying innovative solutions to mitigate study challenges. These include new mobile applications that enable patients to connect visually with their clinical study sites and allow investigators to better complete safety assessments, plus supporting the capability to also collect eConsent, eCOA or data from devices/wearables on the same digital trial platform. PPD also is deploying trial models that enable or augment, respectively, the use of traditional brick-and-mortar sites with full digital support and decentralized (or virtual) site alternatives to allow the recruitment and retention of patients remotely.

PPD’s Accelerated Enrollment Solutions business (AES) also is leveraging similar capabilities to increase customer access to patients by reaching beyond AES’ physical site infrastructure of more than 180 research sites, including rapidly delivering continuity solutions for clinical trials affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as telehealth to remotely screen patients and conduct study visits.

About PPD

PPD is a leading global contract research organization providing comprehensive, integrated drug development, laboratory and lifecycle management services. Our customers include pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device, academic and government organizations. With offices in 46 countries and approximately 24,000 professionals worldwide, PPD applies innovative technologies, therapeutic expertise and a firm commitment to quality to help customers bend the cost and time curve of drug development and optimize value in delivering life-changing therapies to improve health. For more information, visit www.ppd.com.

This news release contains forward-looking statements. These statements often include words such as “expect,” “believe,” “project,” “forecast,” “estimate,” “target” and other similar expressions. Although we believe these forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions at the time they are made, you should be aware that many factors could affect our actual financial results, and therefore actual results might differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. Factors that might materially affect such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, the fragmented and highly competitive nature of the drug development services industry; changes in trends in the biopharmaceutical industry; our ability to keep pace with rapid technological changes that could make our services less competitive or obsolete; political, economic and/or regulatory influences and changes; and other factors disclosed under the “Risk Factors” section in our periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including our latest Annual Report on Form 10-K, which is available on our website at https://investors.ppdi.com or the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. We assume no obligation and disclaim any duty to revise or update any forward-looking statements, or make any new forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.

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