UpSMART: five years of digital innovation in cancer clinical research—achievements, challenges, and recommendations

Abstract

Cancer clinical trials; Clinical trial innovation; Digital health technologies

Ensayos clínicos oncológicos; Innovación en ensayos clínicos; Tecnologías de salud digital

Assaigs clínics oncològics; Innovació en assaigs clínics; Tecnologies de salut digital

UpSMART, a research programme involving 24 European cancer centres, aimed to promote digital innovation in early-phase clinical research addressing challenges in recruitment, data collection and analysis. Several open-source digital healthcare products (DHPs) were developed through UpSMART, including eTARGET and trialFinder for trial matching, and PROACT 2.0 for patient-reported data. Lessons learned highlight the importance of multidisciplinary teams, sustainable funding and deployment, and engagement with the research community to maximise impact.

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by Cancer Research UK (CRUK), Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro (AIRC) and Fundacion Científica-Asociacion Espanola Contra el Cancer (FC-AECC), via an Accelerator Award [A29374] through the CRUK National Biomarker Centre [CTRNBC-2022/100001]. This work was supported by Azure sponsorship credits granted by Microsoft’s AI for Good Research Lab. The funder was not involved in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article, or the decision to submit it for publication.