Building patient-friendly access to clinical trials

Research reveals that 95% of patients do not participate in clinical trials. How do we find better ways to connect willing and qualified participants to clinical trials? How do we ensure diversity in participant populations? And how can we make access to clinical trials more patient-friendly? We will get those answers and more in this episode with Brandon Li, Co-Founder at Power. Power is a fast-growing startup building a patient-friendly way to get access to clinical trials and is working to increase the diversity in clinical trials. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;00;03 - 00;00;17;02  Are there better ways to connect willing and qualified participants to clinical trials? How do you ensure diversity in participant populations? And why do 97% of patients not participate in clinical trials? We'll get those answers and more on this episode of Research in Action.     00;00;18;07 - 00;00;19;19  The need to.     00;00;21;14 - 00;00;41;18  Build the Hello and welcome to Research and Action, brought to you by Oracle Life Sciences. I'm Mike Stiles, and our guest today is Brandon Lee, co-founder at Power. Power is building a patient friendly way to get access to clinical trials, and they're working on increasing the diversity in clinical trials. Brandon, thanks for taking the time to be with us today.     00;00;41;28 - 00;00;42;27  Yeah, it's my pleasure.     00;00;44;06 - 00;01;03;27  Great. Well, looking forward to it. And we are going to be talking about some amazing stuff as always. But we also always like to get a feel for the person behind that amazing stuff. So what did you want to be when you grew up and how did you get from there to the field of clinical trials and technology and the kind of things you're doing now?     00;01;04;06 - 00;01;13;12  It depends on how far back you want to go, but I think that through most of my childhood, I probably wanted to be a like a professional trading card game player as.     00;01;16;03 - 00;01;17;28  Are you a Pokemon man or.     00;01;18;11 - 00;01;29;24  It was it was all of the above, right? It was like a Pokemon journey. Then there was like a, you know, journey. Then there was a magic. The Gathering journey. I kind of cycled through all of them, but I ended up landing on magic, I think, for most of it.     00;01;30;15 - 00;01;32;25  Well, check those old cards. You could be a millionaire.     00;01;33;01 - 00;01;39;12  I've been. I've been watching the the price of Charizard skyrocket with a lot of energy. You remember having plenty of money?     00;01;39;23 - 00;01;43;08  Well, great. Yeah, but obviously that's not what you wound up doing full on.     00;01;43;23 - 00;02;12;07  No, not at all. Yeah, I think the kind of journey here was. Well, at some point I became a consumer internet. Consumer marketplace person sometime between my my kind of professional trading card game times and and kind of coming out of college, I started thinking a lot more about consumer tech. So I spent a handful of years just doing things that look a lot like classic consumer marketplace work.     00;02;12;07 - 00;02;33;14  Thumbtack, Airbnb, Zillow, all kinds of kinds of products. And at one point I had a close friend of mine diagnosed with a brain tumor who had to go looking for a clinical trial on her own and, you know, that journey was brutal for her. She did everything that patients basically go and do today, which is backchannel the heck out of every doctor that she knows.     00;02;33;14 - 00;02;55;08  And eventually all roads ended up leading to clinicaltrials.gov. So she spent weeks there trying to figure out, okay, is there a trial that could make sense for me? Eventually, she finds one and the contact information is like the front desk of the hospital. So she's cold calling the hospital. The hospital's routing her internally. She's trying to find a way to get an appointment and eventually she gets in front of a study, she gets in.     00;02;55;08 - 00;03;17;26  And that's what they had a positive readout earlier this year, which is probably the happiest journey somebody could have gone through. But it was through that kind of experience that I realized a few things. The first one is that she can't be the only person out there who is sitting in front of clinicaltrials.gov, sitting in this kind of situation trying to answer the question, are there leading medical researchers that can help me?     00;03;18;13 - 00;03;42;10  And the second thing we realized was, while that journey is way too difficult today, right. Everything from even discovering trials in the first place to evaluating your options to figure out what you could be qualified for, what looks really promising through to even contacting the research sites. So we just put put our heads together and realize, well, I think that we can actually bring a lot from this consumer into that space and hopefully, hopefully help a lot more people in need.     00;03;42;22 - 00;03;48;09  So tell me what power was founded to do the problems that it specifically seeks to solve?     00;03;48;29 - 00;04;14;24  It's pretty straightforward, and I like to look at it through a couple of different lenses. So through the lens of the patient, it's exactly this kind of dream that I just described, right? It's helping individuals find and get access to leading medical researchers that could help them from the perspective of the sites. It's how do you connect with as many patients that are potentially interested in your study but not established at your site?     00;04;14;24 - 00;04;31;25  So maybe you don't have a relationship with them yet, but we help you kind of like widen that catchment area as a site and then as a sponsor. It's well, we give superpowers to your sites and we help elevate the kind of the reach of your studies to the patients that are using our platform. And we have hundreds of thousands of them now.     00;04;31;25 - 00;04;37;05  So plenty of folks on, on the website looking, looking around for trials and trial information.     00;04;37;28 - 00;04;55;04  So the people who want to be in clinical trials would find useful connections to those doing the research. And what's the level of the research world? How is it embracing the platform? Is it eagerly seeking to connect with these people who want to do clinical trials?     00;04;55;20 - 00;05;17;25  I think this this kind of touches on an age old problem, right where everybody I'm sure the kind of guest are. The the audience of your podcasts knows these stats, but we didn't coming in certainly turns out that finding patients to participate in trials is one of the biggest problems in life. Science, R&D, right? 86% of trials being delayed because they couldn't find the patients to participate.     00;05;17;25 - 00;05;46;23  So what we found is that we've had north of a thousand like research sites already, like just sign up to start connecting with our patients from the kind of ground ground up. And that's led to a movement that we can then point to some really interesting data and say things like, Wow, actually turns out that the the the research sites that are using power or connecting with patients like ten times more than if they weren't they weren't using patients.     00;05;46;23 - 00;05;49;19  And that data has been really meaningful for us to see.     00;05;49;19 - 00;06;09;20  Well, is it a database of willing participants that the researchers can go look at and find? Because it seems to me most patients, they are totally taking the guidance of their doctor, you know, and so is the doctor playing a role in connecting these people with these research projects?     00;06;09;20 - 00;06;27;25  There's kind of two things here. The first one is, yeah, we've got a registry where patients sign up and they say, Yeah, admitted registry. The registry experience from the the site's perspective is kind of like a LinkedIn for patients, if you can imagine it. It's like, Oh, there's these patient profiles, they've created a profile. I can see them.     00;06;28;04 - 00;06;51;27  They might have answered some prescreening questions at some point. So I'm starting to paint a picture of, you know, medical history and I can invite them to connect if it makes sense. So there's kind of like this LinkedIn for patients. And then on the other side, there's also, you know, new patients signing up every month. And I think that's where a lot of the impact is, because our view is that the patients that are most recently active and interested are the patients that are most likely to actually take action.     00;06;52;24 - 00;06;59;22  So it's all about new flow of patients in our mind, even more so than the the kind of depth of of the database or the registry.     00;07;00;07 - 00;07;11;17  And then what about that Dr. element? Are doctors aware that this tool is available and are they eager or reluctant to get their patients involved in clinical trials?     00;07;12;04 - 00;07;30;23  One of the most interesting things that we've started to see is that doctors are referring their patients to us, right? We're starting to see that in the data where, you know, maybe when we launched, nobody's doing that. And then a year ago, you know, you got a handful of people and that number has actually doubled like year on year of like the number of doctors that are actively referring patients.     00;07;30;23 - 00;07;55;20  And it turns out doctors are okay, referring patients to clinical trial resources. It turns out they do that all day long anyways, but they actually send patients to clinicaltrials.gov. And if you talk to any doctor about it, they they kind of look at you like sheepishly and and almost kind of confess that they do it because they hate it, they hate clinicaltrials.gov, and they know it's not going to help the patients that they're working with.     00;07;55;20 - 00;08;17;26  And it's going to be a really difficult experience. So one of the things we found is that by building a superior product experience for consumers, for individuals on the Internet to learn about clinical trials, doctors are actually more than happy to send patients to to the website to learn about trials. And that's been, you know, one of the kind of happy byproducts of building the kind of best patient experience possible.     00;08;18;12 - 00;08;26;11  So because doctors weren't exactly in love with clinicaltrials.gov, they knew they would be sending their patients kind of down a frustrating rabbit hole.     00;08;26;12 - 00;08;27;05  Correct.     00;08;27;05 - 00;08;53;07  Now, your friend. Well, you're right in saying that, you know, researchers have a hard time finding participants for clinical trials. Your friend on the flip side was eager to participate in a clinical trial. So what makes her different from a lot of patients who are reluctant to participate? Is it because they don't know about the clinical trials or they're too scared to engage in them?     00;08;53;07 - 00;08;54;23  What's what's your view on that?     00;08;55;05 - 00;09;13;29  Yeah, I think it's actually about evaluation. I think evaluation is a key step. If we think about kind of the journey in three phases, there's like discovery, even learning about clinical trials and seeing the trials in the first place. That's difficult. You know, in clinical trials that is rather hard to do properly. Discovery or even your option search.     00;09;14;10 - 00;09;32;29  Then there's the second stage of evaluation. What could be good for me? What am I actually qualified for, and why should I be excited about this relative to status quo? And then there's the kind of participation experience of connecting with the right sites. Right? But I think that, like the second stage of evaluation is really, really the the kind of one of the missing pieces here.     00;09;32;29 - 00;10;00;15  All three are difficult, but evaluations of missing piece, oftentimes when we speak to patients and we speak to patients every week, the key question is, well, how should I be thinking about this trial relative to my current my current care? And is there a reason to believe that this is really exciting or meaningful and I think it's on are kind of like partners in the life science space to properly lay that out for patients.     00;10;00;15 - 00;10;12;10  What is the driving hypothesis that makes you excited enough to put your your capital behind this, this study? And I think patients are looking for that with probably less of a clinical expert explanation of it, though.     00;10;12;21 - 00;10;26;13  Your friend, you mentioned that the outcome was positive, So I'm assuming she got into a clinical trial. She participated. She was not one that got the placebo. She actually got a new drug that helped.     00;10;26;24 - 00;10;27;05  Correct.     00;10;27;16 - 00;10;40;19  Well, let's talk about a lack of diversity and the things that make clinical trials, not that user friendly for everyone. Why is diversity a hard problem to solve and what makes the reward well worth the effort?     00;10;41;01 - 00;11;01;23  You know, we if we look at the stats, it's pretty obvious that clinical trials aren't representative of the population. I think the kind of problem here, let's sit with the problem and talk about kind of like the root cause here. I think the problem here, the problem with it is that it kind of poses a broader public health challenge.     00;11;02;21 - 00;11;25;22  Let's imagine everything goes well and we end up getting new treatments through there. Phase three in front of the FDA approved and we start launching them, but we haven't properly ran these trials with a diverse group of patients. We don't actually know how some how some treatments might affect different different populations and that's why I call it a public health challenge, right?     00;11;25;22 - 00;11;46;14  Because all of a sudden now something becomes standard of care. But we don't know how it affects East Asian, how it affects East Asians and that's and that's the kind of root cause problem. It's it's not a I think, a performative point that diversity, it's really kind of like a downstream potential public health challenge. So that's why it's so important.     00;11;46;14 - 00;12;07;12  And then I think, B, the question of why is it the way it is today is an interesting one. And I think it has to do with the history of clinical research sites that that we choose to partner with. Typically, you know, you partner with a handful of clinical research sites. Those research sites are tasked with recruiting patients from their existing populations.     00;12;08;06 - 00;12;29;05  And then, you know, the kind of set of patients you end up seeing on the set of patients that those sites have established. And it just so happens that the sites that we typically work with in research have a largely white existing patients and that that that ends up skewing the kind of population because you've got a bit of a sampling bias at that point.     00;12;29;25 - 00;12;47;21  Right. So obviously research is not a one size fits all proposition. That's it's amazing that things have been passed that have not been tested on all types of people, all demographics, different patient sets. There's kind of assumption that, well, if it worked with this group, it's going to work with everybody.     00;12;48;05 - 00;13;09;07  Yeah, yeah. I mean, certainly I think the the approach thus far. But you know, I think the the industry is making incredible strides here in raising awareness of this challenge. And then certainly with the recent FDA guidance starting to lean in more to understanding that, oh yeah, there is a potential health care challenge that comes with this that we need to be solving for.     00;13;09;07 - 00;13;12;03  And that's been very inspirational. Watch.     00;13;12;03 - 00;13;32;10  So you did form power to address all this. What does it do in terms of actively recruiting to solve the diverse party problem? In other words, increasing that pool of minority candidates, people that traditionally have not been participating in clinical trials?     00;13;32;24 - 00;13;57;20  You know, we think of ourselves as a a source of unique patients that are interested in trials, Right. So we we help improve access for patients that may not be currently established at the at the research sites. So when we when we think about our role in diversity, what matters to us the most is, is our source of patients more diverse, right, than the other kind of status quo.     00;13;58;03 - 00;14;23;13  And turns out when you look at our data, 40% of the patients who sign up and are actively participating on our platform are nonwhite. And that's right in line with what the US Census and what you would expect in a in a representative sample of of the US population. So I'm we're excited that we're able to hold true to that mission of improving access and that as a result of improving access, actually being a representative source of patients that are interested in research.     00;14;23;29 - 00;14;39;01  Well, you're tackling a tough space because there's so much regulation and the practices are absolutely entrenched. So what's been the rudest surprise you've encountered in your mission so far or the toughest hurdle you had to overcome?     00;14;39;17 - 00;15;11;16  Not not rude surprise, but I think one of the the challenges that, you know, I think everybody can empathize with is that our research sites are incredible busy, busy and often overburdened. So sometimes what is potentially easiest for the patient isn't easiest for the research site. And when you when you think about solving this problem of improving access, if you haven't also solved the problem at the research sites, at the end of the day, you can't close the loop, right?     00;15;11;18 - 00;15;30;03  You can't kind of make the kind of transaction complete, so to speak. Right? So one of the kind of hurdles that we need to we need to overcome and we're constantly kind of like balancing is the line between what is best and easiest for patients and then what is best and easiest for the researchers that they actually need to connect with.     00;15;30;03 - 00;15;39;17  And it has to be, you know, a little bit of give and take and easy for both, Easy enough for both the they that they both can take action because ultimately if if one of them doesn't take action, nothing happens.     00;15;39;27 - 00;16;03;05  Right. So ease of use is definitely a factor. Trust is probably the other factor we kind of touched on this, but we're used to things like control groups and devices to make sure that bias and inaccuracies don't enter the clinical research picture. It seems like if there's underrepresentation and trials, the best results you're going to get are cloudy at best.     00;16;03;16 - 00;16;42;10  Yeah. Yeah. You know, trust is an interesting one, right? One thing that we've experienced with the patients on our platform is that once they've if they if they're coming through our platform, it's because they're almost predisposed to be interested in research. Right. If you think about the kind of factors that have to be true for somebody to be predisposed to be interested in research, one of the factors is that they've they've probably considered it a little bit and are coming in with a higher baseline level of trust, which is not to say that you don't have to continue to build trust.     00;16;42;10 - 00;16;59;15  As a as a researcher, I think everybody has to continue to build trust and it's easy to erode it, especially in a in a clinical setting. But what we're seeing is that the folks are looking around on our website and poking around and reading about different studies there and and then ultimately choosing to connect with it with a researcher.     00;17;00;05 - 00;17;04;02  It's because they've built up a requisite amount of trust already.     00;17;04;21 - 00;17;22;12  Well, let's say I'm someone with an understudied disease and I really want to participate in a clinical trial. How does someone go about that? I mean, obviously going to power and being registered and in the database, but what are the odds that I would get accepted? What factors come into play?     00;17;22;27 - 00;17;51;22  I mean, I think the kind of standard factors come into play at that point, right? So a patient kind of comes through the journey on the website, finds a trial and connects with a with a study, then I think the standard kind of factors come into play around eligibility. How qualified are we and can we prove our qualification as a part of connecting with the research sites in order to get the research site excited to kind of bring you in and kind of work with you?     00;17;51;22 - 00;18;12;12  Right. So some of that is on us as a platform to help help patients maybe put together what we call a dossier or an application packet that helps them get quickly considered and screened for a study. Part of that is the kind of nature of how the protocol is written, and I really think we can influence and that's okay.     00;18;12;12 - 00;18;17;28  And that's kind of par for the course. And just the way that research is structured, not everybody is qualified for every study.     00;18;18;13 - 00;18;30;24  Well, I was looking over the notes and, you know, one figure really jumped out at me. And, you know, correct me if this figure is wrong, 97% of U.S. patients and providers don't participate in trials.     00;18;31;14 - 00;18;55;27  Yeah, it's something like that. I think roughly 3% of of patients as the stat that I've seen, 3 to 5% of patients participate in trials, which is which is amazing when you think about the kind of opportunity to develop improve visibility of research. Research is such an important part of our system and oftentimes should be considered as a part of the the kind of treatment journey like for for an individual.     00;18;56;01 - 00;19;18;04  And I think that's part of actually solving this and increasing that percentage of want to think about that is like the end goal. Part of solving this, I think, is building a relationship with patients through their treatment journey and helping them understand, okay, I'm at this point and I'm on this, you know, potential treatment path and there are some trials that are available on and make sense right now.     00;19;18;13 - 00;19;33;24  But then there are also some trials that could make sense a year from now based on how these kind of treatments progress and based on how I react to them. And I think part of what we want to do as a platform is build that relationship and help be a part of that that journey in that planning for individuals.     00;19;34;17 - 00;20;05;11  Well, 97% is huge. And you said earlier 86% of clinical trials are delayed because they can't recruit enough patients. Is it that people and providers are not participating because trials are so hard to stand up and run? Or, you know, we've talked to other people before, you know, on the podcast and previous interviews and and a big problem is participants in clinical trials kind of don't really know what they're getting into in terms of the level of monitoring that's needed.     00;20;05;11 - 00;20;19;19  And, you know, it becomes very difficult to incorporate the clinical trial into their lifestyles. And are those some of the issues that are just preventing 97% from leaning into research?     00;20;20;12 - 00;20;43;24  You know, I go back to this evaluation question like, are we are we properly are we properly conveying to patients like the reasons to believe if there's a compelling reason to believe that this is a like the best kind of like path forward, I think that that's is kind of like a like put into context of the burden of, of participation.     00;20;43;24 - 00;21;05;28  And I think oftentimes from the patients experience, all they kind of like get exposed to really is the burden of participation without the, you know, the requisite amount of exposure to, you know, why is this the best path forward for me or the best option available right now? I think about it in terms of balancing these two things.     00;21;06;17 - 00;21;38;22  Yeah, there's an increased ask and burden on behalf of the patients and there's also potentially a really compelling reason why this is exciting. And those two things have to be put into a kind of like proverbial pros and cons list that individuals can kind of trade off as they as they think about about research, but not no, I don't think that's the kind of question of burden is excluding 97% of of patients, I think that there are patients that that will be turned off by the burden.     00;21;38;22 - 00;21;41;01  But I don't think it's 97% of people.     00;21;41;20 - 00;22;06;23  And for the general public, you know, getting excited about research, how do you think the amount of time that it takes to do good and qualified research, you know, and get all the way through to FDA approval? It just seems like it takes years and years and years. So it's it's hard to get excited about something that may not yield results for anyone until well into the future.     00;22;07;08 - 00;22;22;27  I think if you put yourself into the shoes of the individual participating, right, it's it's not typically a question of, okay, like what is the impact ten years from now? I think it's a question of, you know, what am I experiencing in the here and now? Does that make sense?     00;22;23;13 - 00;22;39;23  Yeah, absolutely. Is control of the major clinical trials in the hands of too few facilities and researchers, or do you feel it's pretty much properly democratized? You're seeing a lot of clinical research opportunities available.     00;22;40;09 - 00;23;16;16  Yeah, control is an interesting question, right? So certainly clinical trials are concentrated to a group of providers, sites that are familiar and let's say have a track record of doing research. And I think there are like very reasonable rationales for that. I would even argue, you know, probably okay with that, there's a little bit of concentration, right? Because the kind of bigger a trial gets, the more people that are or the more providers that are participating, the more noise and variance kind of gets introduced and gets introduced to the system.     00;23;16;16 - 00;23;38;20  And that's not always a good thing. Our perspective here is that we do need to increase access, but the way to increase access is not necessarily to get to 100% of providers participating in in every study. I think the way to increase access is actually to help individuals and patients learn about studies that are happening in their in their geography, and they get properly connected with those sites.     00;23;38;29 - 00;24;00;02  And to make that that kind of journey easier, rights for patients have more visibility to what's available and then getting connected with the right person in the city. It doesn't really make sense to have, you know, a hundred providers in Cincinnati doing a doing a study right is just about funneling patients to the to the right locations and improving kind of like access and transparency.     00;24;00;02 - 00;24;00;26  Those opportunities.     00;24;01;17 - 00;24;17;01  Well, you do have primarily a technology product. You're connecting people to clinical trials. Technology is going to play a role in that. But it's not like this is tender, right? Me So what what kind of tech and guidelines does power use to make these connections?     00;24;17;01 - 00;24;38;00  We think of the our, you know, our publicly facing platform and that's that's what most people see when they kind of engage with us as like an Airbnb like interface for individuals who are looking for trial. So it's really on the on the patients side, right? It's like a discovery and evaluation product and we do a bunch of things that are interesting there.     00;24;38;05 - 00;24;59;26  But one of the things we do that's interesting is we actually have one of the best structured data sets on eligibility criteria that is out there and then as a result, we can have patients now start to do their search on the basis of, for example, like their genetic biomarkers, and they can do filtering on genetic biomarkers relative or relevant to their their kind of condition that's not available anywhere, anywhere else.     00;24;59;26 - 00;25;31;04  Right. From a patient facing perspective, that's that level of kind of like of detailed search experience actually makes the discovery and evaluation process way easier on from a patient's perspective. Then on the flip side, you know, let's use that as continue the Airbnb analogy research sites get access to. Well, we like to think of as, you know, like a referral management or a recruitment management platform that they can use to see all the patients that are interested in their trial on our website, on our platform.     00;25;32;14 - 00;25;53;09  So it's kind of a workflow management tool that that sites can use to kind of connect those patients that are on our website and expressing interest in their studies. And then somewhere in between we've got a kind of like matching algorithm. So we're I'm sure everybody who's who's kind of come through here and is working on technology is thinking about ways that you can use A.I. rights to improve workflows.     00;25;53;09 - 00;26;25;05  Our view is that A.I. is an interface is not the end game, but as a as a component to kind of like your tech stack is really compelling. So we're looking at ways to use AI to improve match rates, improve kind of screening qualification, and in doing so, reduce some of the burden on the on the patient side for identifying what could be a good trial, but also reducing burden on the site's perspective and having to screen that these patients from from scratch every single time.     00;26;25;27 - 00;26;38;10  So it sounds like the databases, the processing power required for that would be pretty intensive. Is all of that being run smoothly and securely in the cloud? Is that a hybrid approach? Is it on premises? What do you have?     00;26;38;17 - 00;26;46;12  Yeah, it's all in the cloud and it's not a you know, we're not making our own A.I. models, right? So it's it's not nearly as intense as maybe it sounds.     00;26;46;29 - 00;27;03;24  So it sounds like the proposition is just that there are the ability to run filters and eliminate mismatches to get to good results better. And that a superior, I would assume, to what clinicaltrials.gov have offers.     00;27;04;10 - 00;27;23;18  Oh, yeah, certainly right. For if we're going to both sides of the equation, patients can more quickly figure out what trials they should actually be considering. Right. Like if you if your patient search on clinicaltrials.gov, you get thrown 150 different options that you need to track in a spreadsheet and try to whittle down towards five or ten that are a good fit.     00;27;23;18 - 00;27;39;06  So patients can very quickly do that. It takes them a minute on our platform and then on the researchers side, they can double click into the patient's profile, the medical history, all this kind of stuff in order to quickly make an assessment about whether this patient is qualified enough to kind of come in and screen.     00;27;39;29 - 00;28;08;20  So what we've been talking about is bridging the gap and making the connections between patients and clinical research. And Oracle Life Sciences mission is kind of bridge the gap between clinical research and then clinical care. So kind of in the connecting business as well. But if power is successful and we're running diverse clinical trials, what are your thoughts on how those learnings can then be made actionable in the point of care and patient portals area?     00;28;09;08 - 00;28;37;02  I think that, you know, and this is kind of early in and the way that we're thinking about it, but I think that providers have a really important role here and consideration and the consideration process of clinical trials. And one thing that we would love to to see more is for us to have broken down the barriers for providers to understand and what trials are currently running in their specialty and stay on top of the best options.     00;28;37;02 - 00;29;00;12  Right Today, you know, providers in the community have to stay on top of reams of information. It's really quite a difficult journey for them as well to stay on top of the kind of latest research in their in their category. So one thing we would love to see is for those providers to be able to leverage power to, you know, just stay smart on the kind of latest in a medical research.     00;29;00;17 - 00;29;05;14  That way when they do have a patient comes through, they have the information they need at their fingertips as well.     00;29;06;04 - 00;29;26;29  Are doctors reluctant to give patients? I don't want to say false hope because the hope is genuine, but it's almost like they don't want to get their hopes up by saying, hey, this clinical trial is likely to give you a solution where today we don't have a solution for you.     00;29;27;17 - 00;29;50;09  I think providers are are really the experts at navigating that that conversation. And I don't know any providers who I think misrepresent the the opportunities present in clinical trials. But I think really providers are quite thoughtful about how they present research as an option.     00;29;50;09 - 00;30;08;06  Well, we talked about your tech stack. And when you think about your tech stack and you look over all the tools that you have, is there anything on your wish list or is there anything you know, you touched on I a little bit that you see coming in the future that's going to really kick power up a notch?     00;30;08;26 - 00;30;11;27  Yeah. I mean, if somebody could just solve this medical record thing, I'd be nice.     00;30;13;11 - 00;30;29;07  Well, you've brought up an area of mass chaos, but kind of expand on that. You know, what's what's the problem? Is it just like incoherent, inconsistent, not interconnected methods for keeping medical records for Americans and others?     00;30;29;19 - 00;31;07;23  Yeah, all of the above. Right. And, you know, patients might want to get access to their medical records. How do they get those records? You know, the new clinical trial inevitably is going to want the medical records as well. How do how does the trial get access to those medical records, the kind of like general mosaic of different set ups and different communication norms and different like ways to share the records, I think introduces a lot of inconsistency into the space, which makes it difficult for everybody from providers to researchers to patients, and certainly for the life science companies that are pulling their hair out and looking at everything, trying to figure out is there     00;31;07;25 - 00;31;09;09  is there a good way through this mess?     00;31;09;27 - 00;31;12;25  Turns out a little standardization isn't a bad thing.     00;31;13;02 - 00;31;38;28  No, it could be really helpful. I don't know. You know, I think a little bit of the the kind of banking and finance stuff where Clyde has really solved this inter connectivity problem for our intraoperative interoperability problem for financial services institutions to allow fintech at some point. It'd be nice if somebody does that on the medical record side, and there are a lot of really great teams sprinting at this.     00;31;38;28 - 00;31;47;18  So, you know, I'm I'm cheering them on. Waiting for the day when collecting a medical record is as easy as connecting my bank account to a new app.     00;31;48;10 - 00;32;07;28  Well, if you were to assess where we are today in terms of bringing more participation and diversity into clinical trials and where we might be, say, five years from now, can you change mindsets and the culture around clinical trials in that period of time? Where do you see this going in, say, the next five years?     00;32;08;15 - 00;32;36;24  I think it's it's interesting. I think there's a ton of runway ahead of us for impact. Or let's go back to one of the stats that you brought up. 97% do not participate in trials. 3% do getting 1% more of the kind of population to be excited about research. And depending on research, just 1% increases. The overall the overall participate participation rates of the population by 33%.     00;32;36;24 - 00;32;56;25  That's massive, right? So can we go from 3% to 5% in the next five years, almost doubling the kind of participation rate? That's huge impact, a huge impact on on our industry. It's not yet broad population adoption. And I think that's okay. When you're starting from a small base, you kind of have to stack up the the wins and think about them economies relative terms.     00;32;57;14 - 00;33;03;15  Well, we'll look forward to watching the progress in the space and we'll let you know when that medical records thing gets sort of shorter.     00;33;05;01 - 00;33;05;03  So.     00;33;05;04 - 00;33;15;11  You can be on your way. Well, Brandon, thanks again for being with us today. If someone wants to get in touch with you or learn more about what power does, what's the best way to do that?     00;33;15;20 - 00;33;39;28  Yeah, you know, I think that get in touch with me. I probably shouldn't do this, but my email is Brandon up with power dot com. Feel free to send me an email. Always happy to chat and share. Share what we're up to. And then if you want to take a look at our website, it's it's free and public so it's with power dot com pretty easy to go find and take a look at the kind of experience that we're trying to build for for people who are learning about research.     00;33;40;11 - 00;34;12;22  Fantastic. And we appreciate it. If you are interested in how Oracle can simplify and accelerate your life sciences research, we invite you to check out Oracle dot com slash life sciences and also be sure to subscribe to the show because there's more genius ahead and join us next time on Research and Action.