GUWAHATI: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati, in collaboration with global institutions, have developed a new method for multi-stage clinical trials that could potentially transform personalised healthcare. This was revealed via a press release released by the university on Monday, February 3.
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The new approach adjusts treatment plans in real-time based on how each patient responds, making medical care more effective and tailored to individual needs. It focuses on Dynamic Treatment Regimes (DTRs), which help doctors change treatments as a patient’s condition changes.
These treatment plans are designed through Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomised Trials (SMARTs), which help find the best treatment combinations for different patients over time. For example, if a diabetes patient doesn’t respond to one medication, the system can suggest a different drug or a combination of therapies.
To facilitate this method, the research team, led by Palash Ghosh from IIT Guwahati, has introduced an adaptive randomisation method. Unlike traditional trials, which assign treatments equally even if some are less effective, this new method shifts more patients to better-performing treatments as the trial progresses. This helps reduce treatment failures and improves patient outcomes.
The study’s findings were published in the journal Biometrics, and the research was carried out in partnership with Duke-NUS Medical School and the National University of Singapore, along with the University of Michigan, USA.