FDA Launches App for Infectious Disease Treatment Experiences

On Dec. 5, 2019, FDA announced the launch of CURE ID, a mobile app and website designed to allow the clinical community to report their experiences treating infectious diseases with novel uses of existing FDA-approved drugs. The new platform will give healthcare providers an outlet to crowdsource medical information about life-saving interventions and facilitate the development of new drugs for neglected diseases.

The app, which is the result of a collaboration between FDA and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), collects a report form from caregivers about their experiences using an approved product for an unapproved use, according to an FDA press release. Healthcare providers can then browse through cases of successful and unsuccessful treatments and clinical trials, giving them the tools to identify drug candidates for additional study, encourage further drug development, and pinpoint individual patient treatment decisions.

“The CURE ID application focuses on drugs for infectious diseases lacking adequate treatments, including neglected tropical diseases, emerging infectious threats, and infections caused by antimicrobial-resistant organisms. When health care professionals directly input their clinical cases into the app, CURE ID allows these real-world experiences to be organized and analyzed much faster, making it easier to spot promising new uses for existing drugs,” said Amy Abernethy, MD, PhD, FDA principal deputy commissioner, in the press release. “Our hope is that this app will serve as a connector among major treatment centers, academics, private practitioners, government facilities, and other health care professionals from around the world and ultimately get treatments to patients faster.”

“The potential importance of new therapeutic opportunities from repurposing drugs can’t be understated,” added NCATS Director Christopher P. Austin, MD, in the press release. “The CURE ID platform exemplifies how collaborative efforts can spark innovations that benefit patients. This new platform harnesses the power of crowdsourcing to help gather medical observations in the field and help identify potentially effective treatments for diseases.”

As of its launch, the platform currently features data from 325 infectious diseases and syndromes, 1500 initial cases from clinicians, and 18,000 clinical trials.

Source: FDA