Irish contract research organisation (CRO) Icon has launched a new clinical trial monitoring service that promises to save sponsors time and money.

The service - called Iconik Monitoring - uses real-time trial data to help direct the use of resources in a manner which ties in with the current trend towards the adoption of risk-based monitoring (RBM) as well as adaptive trial designs.

The system uses event, data volume and risk-based triggers to ensure effective use of monitoring resources and is designed to conform to guidance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and European Medicines Agency (EMA) on risk-based monitoring, according to Icon.

"Iconik Monitoring enables us to rapidly identify and resolve site-related issues and achieve a higher level of process and data consistency across sites," said the CRO's executive vice president Nuala Murphy.

"By ensuring more effective use of site visits, Iconik Monitoring can also reduce study costs, and in some large studies these savings can be as high as 15% to 25% of the overall cost of the study," she added.

Earlier this year, non-profit industry consortium TransCelerate BioPharma laid out a toolkit to help clinical researchers apply RBM, saying that greater use of the approach would enhance patient safety, boost the quality of clinical data and push efficiencies.

At the tie, TransCelerate noted that despite a lot of effort spent on collecting and reviewing data, there was little evidence to suggest that this was leading to improvements in trials and the data they generate.

Icon says it continuously refines the metrics selected for surveillance using the Iconik system, as well as the algorithms used to calculate those metrics.

These settings and the pre-programmed methodologies for combing databases and comparing data points can be adapted to suit the study protocol and therapeutic area, it adds.