microsampling in clinical trials: 6 things you may not know

Microsampling is gaining popularity as an alternative to conventional sampling in clinical trials. The reasons have to do with people, just the laboratories. Patients like the VAMS™ system. It’s much easier on them and less time-consuming. Parents are particularly happy when microsampling is used to sample from babies and children.

• Clinical trial organizers and clinical trial facilitators find it difficult to recruit and retain patients in part because of the inconvenience of in-clinic blood draws. Patients lose part of their day sitting in waiting rooms. The procedure itself can be unpleasant. Microsampling is easy, quick, and relatively comfortable. It can improve recruitment, retention, and participant satisfaction.
• Patients and participants can do their own micro blood draws at home. Customized blood collection kits comes with simple instructions that patients, parents or caretakers can follow easily.
• Transport is easy; you simply complete the kit and drop it in the mailbox. Samples can also be taken more frequently. People in remote rural or mountainous areas can use the kits without driving for hours to a city for blood-drawing. This can reduce reliance on dry ice, biohazard shipping, and other costly inconveniences of wet blood shipping.
• More and more clinical laboratories are able to utilize tiny sample amounts of biological fluids, whether blood, saliva, bronchial secretions or other bodily fluids, to create large amounts of data. Bioanalytical labs everywhere are getting small.
• Clinical trials benefit from the ways microsampling facilitates the flow of data into the study. Sampling kits arrive regularly. Fewer participants drop out of the program. Microsampling has increased the number of participants in trials, not only by being easy to use but because people in the remotest parts of the world can take part. From a clinical trial operations or drug development operations perspective, the benefits are substantial.
• From Nairobi to Bangkok; Rio to Kiev, people are reaping the benefits of microsampling, and not just in global clinical trials. Therapeutic drug monitoring for transplant patients, those with chronic conditions, and others are starting to use the technology. Pediatric and neonatal units in hospitals are interested in microsampling because small blood draws are much easier on small patients. It's part of the next phase in healthcare - clinical trials are just the beginning.
• Hospitals and researchers may find microsampling is easier on their budgets, too. The technology simplifies processing, which can eliminate equipment and streamline the process. 

Word is spreading about the benefits of small samples. Laboratories are changing. Clinical trials, the pharmaceutical business, and the entire drug development process is getting a boost with the onset of this technique. Your research may just need microsampling.