How To Streamline, Simplify, and Expand Your Compassionate Use Program

For eligible patients, compassionate use can be a powerful and potentially life-saving program. Unfortunately, implementation is often easier said than done. Such programs require policies and governance structures, strategic partnerships, and a user-friendly request system. Luckily, this is where CyberGrants can help!

Expanded Access (also known as Compassionate Use) is a critical program that allows patients who are fighting life-threatening illnesses to gain early access to medications that haven’t been approved for use in their jurisdiction. For example, a cancer patient without treatment options who cannot be enrolled in a clinical trial might be able to access medication that is still in the investigatory phase and not otherwise widely available to patients.

Not only does compassionate use open up treatment options for some patients, but it has also benefited approval processes by providing valuable real-world data on effectiveness and safety. By bringing relief to patients in the direst of circumstances and enabling the development of revolutionary treatments, there is no doubt that Expanded Access programs can be beneficial for the entire healthcare ecosystem.

Although these programs have a myriad of benefits, they’re governed by global regulations and require careful oversight and strict compliance. Beyond that, requests for access often require a quick turnaround time. The decision whether to treat a patient facing the final stages of an illness must be made in a matter of days, if not hours. As a result, oversight must be carefully balanced against speed.

A commitment to compassionate use means having policies, end-to-end processes, and systems in place to manage requests in a prompt, fair, and efficient manner. This is where we come in!

See How CyberGrants Can Help Facilitate Your Compassionate Use Program

At CyberGrants, we’ve helped our customers track, approve, and monitor requests for assistance through our grants management platform for over 20 years. As a result, it seemed like a natural progression to expand our offering and support pharmaceutical and life sciences companies to manage Expanded Access requests. Our system allows healthcare providers to submit requests for medication along with relevant test results and supporting documentation in the format best suited to facilitate a quick review process.

When a request is submitted, CyberGrants will automatically assign it to the necessary approvers based on the medication requested, the location, and a variety of other factors, eliminating the need to manually route it. For a request with a short response window, manual routing and management can waste critical time a patient simply might not have. We route the request to the necessary stakeholders so they can review and approve it in a timely manner. In some cases, the medication can even be shipped on the same day! Additionally, in the event that further information is needed, supplementary documents can be quickly submitted through our system, eliminating costly back-and-forth with health care providers. But that’s not all! Every step of this process is tracked through CyberGrants and can be made available for compliance and audit purposes later.

The Future of Compassionate Use

The team at CyberGrants is passionate about finding ways to use our technology to improve lives and drive maximum social impact. Although this just is one of many ways we achieve that goal, it’s one with an immediate, tangible impact on individuals fighting life-threatening illnesses. We’re proud we can help make that process quicker and simpler.

While we take pride in this work, we know we can always do more. We’re continually investigating ways to further streamline the process, including how to facilitate re-supply requests in a way that makes submissions easier, approvals faster, and enables tracking to reflect a complete record from the original request through all re-supplies. We’re looking forward to working closely with the pharmaceutical industry to continue to make our platform even better and improve the lives of patients everywhere.

Ready to tap into the power of an Expanded Access program? Get a personalized walkthrough with CyberGrants today.

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