IIT Guwahati develops multi-stage clinical trial method to provide personalised medical care

NEW DELHI: Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati has developed a multi-stage clinical trial method for personalised medical care. The newly developed method works on real-time data for individual patients' responses and provides them with recommendations such as switching drugs or combining therapies.

The researchers at IIT Guwahati conducted the trials in collaboration with Duke-NUS Medical School, National University of Singapore, and University of Michigan, USA, the official notification said. The research aims at designing “Dynamic Treatment Regimes (DTRs) through Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomised Trials (SMARTs),” the institute said.

On January 10, IIT Guwahati's School of Agro and Rural Technology (SART) hosted the Tree-Based Enterprise Incubation Center (TBEIC) under the Tree Outside Forests in India (TOFI) initiative to develop sustainable, and tree-based enterprises.

Palash Ghosh, assistant professor, department of mathematics at IIT Guwahati, said: “Adaptive designs like this would encourage more patient participation in clinical trials like SMART. When patients see they are receiving treatments tailored to their needs, they are more likely to stay engaged. This approach also has vast potential for public health interventions, such as tailoring substance abuse, recovery plans to individual needs, as well as in other chronic diseases.”

“These trials will also help in tackling the challenges in optimising treatment strategies…,” the institute added.

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DTR is an advanced decision rule that adapts treatments “dynamically” as per the patient’s condition. For instance, if a patient is suffering from diabetes, and initial medication is not giving results, DTRs will provide suggestions such as changing prescribed drugs or combining therapies. It also provides immediate outcomes like a jump in blood sugar levels.

On the other hand, SMART comprises multiple stages of treatment, where patients are “reassigned as per their responses to earlier interventions,” the institute added.

Ghosh and his team have developed a method that “dynamically assigns patients to treatment arms based on real-time trial data by optimally changing the patient allocation ratios in favor of a better-performing treatment sequence at that point of time of the trial,” it said.

As per the institute, the research team will soon be joining hands with Indian medical institutions to conduct SMART trials for the “effective management of mental health issues” using traditional Indian medicines.