People Science’s mobile app unlocks decentralized clinical trials for nutraceuticals

Clinical trials are vital to the success of branded nutraceutical ingredients and supplements, demonstrating their efficacy in a wide range of population groups. However, traditional trials can be costly in time and resources, often requiring participants to travel to a research center multiple times to take a supplement or ingredient and test its impact.

US-based People Science offers an alternative. The clinical research company addresses a need for affordable, rigorous clinical science through its mobile app, Chloe, which allows people to join a clinical trial from home.

People Science designs protocols, recruits participants, oversees, and conducts studies. It sends a product and testing equipment to participants’ homes, where they keep track of their progress through Chloe. 

Nutrition Insight meets with Noah Craft, Ph.D., MD, co-founder and co-CEO of People Science, to discuss how nutraceutical companies can use Chloe in decentralized clinical trials. This app helps people answer the question, “What works for me?” 

“That mobile side ties into the back end of our platform, which allows scientists to study hundreds or thousands of people at once, answering the question, what works for me? Scientists want to know if this product works for people like you.” 

“On the other hand, we’re an end-to-end contract research organization (CRO),” adds Craft. “Some clients license our platform and run their studies directly with consumers. Other clients hire us to run those studies.”  

He stresses the importance of gaining consumer trust: “Consumers need to trust us as scientists with their data and engaging them.” 

Convenient consumer engagement

Craft says that traditional clinical trials don’t always offer many direct benefits or engagement to their participants. In contrast, he notes that People Science’s decentralized trials offer convenience and engagement. 

“We enjoy 94% compliance in all our studies, which tells you that people are having fun. They’re following along, learning things.”

“We’re typically testing things they care about,” he adds. “When we run a trial through Cloe, we’re engaging the participant, making them an active participant. We show them their data and send them the study results at the end.”  

A traditional clinical trial often requires participants and researchers to travel to a research center to use and test products.However, in a traditional trial, Craft says participants may have to travel to a research center ten times in three months. 

“In our trials, you get recruited at home and stay home. The product comes to your house, an Oura ring comes to your house, and you get to see your data in real-time. It’s quite fun and improves the quality of the experience and the data.”  

Raising R&D efficiencies

Craft says that People Science can help nutraceutical companies run clinical studies faster, better, and cheaper by using the app. 

For example, he details that a traditional CRO budget for a trial the company recently started was US$1 million. “The way we’re running it, it’s around US$200,000.” 

“The data is the same; the rigor is the same. But when you require doctors, coordinators, and patients to all sit there, that requires a lot of time.” 

At the same time, decentralized testing is still new to nutrition and supplements. Craft notes that larger nutraceutical companies that run 20 clinical trials annually are still getting used to it. They typically hire People Science to run a few trials as they transition. 

“In newer companies not seasoned in the old ways of doing things, most people hear about it and say, why wouldn’t you run it decentralized?”

“Many brand-new companies bringing their first product to market come to us thinking they need a single, randomized, placebo control study. Very quickly, they realize you can use the platform for beta testing with your friends and family, running a consumer health study with 300 people without a placebo, and running a smaller placebo control study, all on the same platform.” People Science can help nutraceutical companies run clinical studies faster, better, and cheaper by using the app.

Real-world benefits

In addition to offering a cost advantage, Craft says decentralized testing through Chloe enables better real-world applicability.  

“Compared to traditional trials, you have the same high quality of science. But the population you study is quite diverse. It’s in their real life; you’re not locking them up in a lab.” 

“When you do decentralized work, you can recruit any percentage of men and women, any demographics, any ages, because you recruit through social media,” he continues. “We’ve gotten very good at finding people in their journey and bringing something useful to them.” 

For example, nutraceutical companies may look for an African American person with prediabetes who’s in their 50s and a product targeting that part of their health journey. “To find a research center that has a lot of people in that demographic is challenging,” adds Craft. 

Moreover, he notes that People Science has a wide geographic coverage. “Typically, in the US, we launch to all 50 states simultaneously, which is difficult if you have one research center.” 

User-friendly personalization

The Chloe app is an acronym for Consumer Health Learning and Organizing Ecosystem. The company refers to it as an ecosystem, as Craft explains, “because it’s [made up of] the platform plus the people who use it; the actual participants are part of Chloe.” 

Consumers can download the app to their phones for free. They can integrate it with wearables like a smartwatch and use it as a personal research tool as the app shows consumers’ data to determine if a product works for them. 

The Chloe app integrates with wearables, includes testing tools, surveys, and an avatar to engage with participants (Image credit: People Science).“If you download it, you’re in self-experimentation mode. Right now, there are four modules: pain, sleep, anxiety, and mood. You can use it to buy and test products on your own.” 

“You can also join sponsored studies,” adds Craft. “For example, you could be studying a melatonin product you bought for yourself for sleep, or if you’re having trouble sleeping, you could join an insomnia study. We will then send you the product, a wearable, all those things.” 

The back end of Chloe is designed for scientists. This end-to-end platform covers all steps from social media recruitment and pre-screening to screening consent. “It manages parts of the ethics board process, and it allows scientists or coordinators, at a high level, to look at multiple studies at once, look at the business and clinical data all at once.” 

Scientists and coordinators can also communicate directly with individual participants, for example, by answering questions. The app also reminds participants of their schedule and whether they took a product that day, including surveys and testing tools. 

“We also made it fun,” adds Craft. “There’s a science avatar who gives you a pep talk. If you’re doing things on time, she says, ‘good job,’ so you get a little dopamine rush from being a participant.” 

In an effort to develop more inclusive clinical trials, Rousselot also developed a user-friendly mobile app to expand the reach of randomized clinical trial design for its hydrolyzed cartilage matrix supplement. 

Meanwhile, academia underscores the importance of interdisciplinary nutrition trials to expand holistic health knowledge. Northumbria University in Newcastle, UK, improves its trials by combining expertise from six labs — brain, sports, vascular, sleep, omics (analyzing the human microbiome), and biological labs.