Rosenberg’s career in life science and healthcare spans more than 40 years. He has led the development and deployment of cloud-based solutions with a focus on driving more integrated approaches to patient-centric trial management. Rosenberg was recently Senior Vice President and General Manager of Oracle Health Sciences. Prior to that, he was the visionary behind the integrated clinical technology suite introduced by Phase Forward which Oracle acquired in 2010. Rosenberg joined uMotif, the patient-centric platform powering site-based to fully decentralized clinical, real-world, and post-marketing research.

Conception of uMotif

Established in 2012, uMotif has developed an e-Clinical platform that meets the real needs of patients, making trial participation and data capture as simple as possible. uMotif was born when its co-founders met two patients with Parkinson’s Disease, who wanted new digital tools to help them manage, track and understand their disease, treatments, medication, and healthcare journey. Like many patients, they wanted a better way to engage with their health, communicate more effectively with clinicians through data, and feel more empowered.

uMotif launched two large-scale research projects with over 18,000 people tracking and donating over 9 million Patient-Reported Outcomes, symptoms, devices, and other data points. This led uMotif to take its learnings from healthcare and pivot into patient-centered research. Whether one is talking about site-based, fully decentralized clinical, real-world, or post-marketing research, patient participation, and engagement are core challenges to study success. Study dropout rates are incredibly high across all phases of research, slowing the pace of essential new research, observes Steve. “uMotif saw the opportunity to address these research challenges by applying its consumer-grade design best practices and cloud-native applications to digital health technology. We started by understanding the burdens that trial participation puts on the patient and how that impacts patient engagement. We drove a patient-first mindset in developing the software.”

Healthcare challenges galore

One key risk is that sponsors and CROs can be too fast in putting technology first and being seduced to implement the next new tech innovation, says Steve. “Rushing to implement new technology is often risky, high cost, and can often fail to deliver value. Instead, pharma sponsors of clinical trials need to start with patients first, designing thoughtful solutions around the needs of the people involved in research. Tech should come later, once the patient-centered solution is designed.”

An integrated approach to patient-centric clinical trial

Patient-centric trials or patient-centricity is something that many people are speaking about. For the most part, they miss the real point. “The idea is to recognize two things. First, the patient sacrifices their time and body to contribute to the greater good. There are patients who believe that the trial is their last hope, but even in that case, they are sacrificing. It is also important to recognize that the clinical trial is just one aspect of a patient’s experience with their disease. That gives us the opportunity to meet the patient where they are and engage them accordingly.”

Providing a decentralized clinical, real healthcare world

The uMotif platform powers all study designs, in all research settings. “Our software is available from app stores on any device and is designed to provide pharmaceutical, biotech, MedTech and Contract Research Organization (CRO) clients with the most engaging patient data capture experience.” The platform captures regulatory-compliant eCOA / ePRO, symptom, eDiary, device, and other data for clinical trials and real-world studies. “Our relentless focus on high quality, patient-centric design and modern cloud-native software, allows uMotif to deliver high rates of data capture, patient retention, data quality and delivery speed – ultimately helping achieve faster, better trials.”

Leadership traits

“I find that respect is the key trait. Also, the ability to use humor, remain calm in a crisis, and encourage risk taking. I also believe that both in my personal life and professional life – taking the time to explain the context of what is going on to people, encourages teamwork and commitment. I think the fear of failure can be a good driver as long as it doesn’t limit the ability to take risks and try new things. I have learned a long time ago that if you aren’t willing to change and adapt, you will fail.”

“Empathy is extremely important. Especially in the healthcare and pharma services sector, understanding what your end users are trying to accomplish in their job is the only way you can come up with good solutions.”