BetterLife Pharma announces VirTrial as patient monitoring partner for COVID-19 study in Australia to test efficacy of AP-003

BetterLife Pharma Inc (CSE:BETR) (OTCQB:BETRF) announced Thursday that it will be teaming up with VirTrial LLC to conduct patient monitoring for its imminent COVID-19 clinical trials in Australia to test the efficacy of AP-003, a proprietary interferon alpha 2b formulation.  VirTrial is a telehealth platform provider that is changing the way pharmaceutical companies conduct clinical trials and enabling research sites to improve patient recruitment and retention.  BetterLife said VirTrial’s platform enables the company to empower its selected clinical research sites to perform virtual visits – a combination of secure video, audio, chat, and messaging, which can be used on any device. Incorporating virtual visits facilitates BetterLife to evaluate, qualify and routinely monitor both patients and research sites for studies without physical travel. READ: BetterLife Pharma receives FINRA approval to resume trading on OTC Markets Unlike other clinical trial vendors that began as technology companies, BetterLife said VirTrial has a stable team of clinical research veterans and experienced tech entrepreneurs teaming together to lead the company towards providing the human population with remote access to clinical research sites. “Considering the constant changing restrictions on travel due to COVID-19, we felt that this was the best option for us to proceed without delay with our patient trials," said BetterLife CEO Dr Ahmad Doroudian in a statement. “We feel that partnering with an innovative company like VirTrial will assist us in virtually monitoring patients who may or may not be able to travel to our clinical sites owing to self-isolation at home.” Mark Hanley, CEO of VirTrial, added: “The sites are excited about the opportunity to be part of the solution for a true and present need and appreciate the benefit of being able to conduct the study via a fully remote DCT to eliminate any risk to employees.” In other company news, BetterLife announced that it has signed a share purchase agreement to assign the issued and outstanding shares of its subsidiary, Pivot Pharmaceuticals Manufacturing Corp to an unrelated third party. The assignment includes the company’s lease of the manufacturing facility in Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Quebec, Canada and its in-process Health Canada license application. Contact the author: patrick@proactiveinvestors.com Follow him on Twitter @PatrickMGraham