Three questions with Steve Lyons
Steve Lyons
Vice President, Data Delivery and Integration Engineering
uMotif’s VP of Data Delivery and Integration Engineering Steve Lyons discusses how data delivery and integration strategy powers our customer centric mission, which technology innovations are on Steve’s radar for the year ahead, and more.
How does uMotif’s data delivery and integration strategy enhance its patient-centric approach to clinical trials?
At uMotif, everything we do is rooted in the principle of patient centricity. From a data integration perspective, that means ensuring the systems we build are not only robust and compliant, but also designed to minimize participant burden and maximize data utility. Our architecture is built to support real-time, high-quality data capture across multiple devices and formats—whether that’s through ePRO or external devices.
We focus on creating seamless experiences for participants, ensuring platform responsiveness, and reducing duplicate input. All of this is underpinned by a flexible data layer that enables researchers to analyze insights faster while maintaining complete traceability back to the participant source. Our strategy is to bridge the gap between the patient experience and research outcomes through thoughtful, scalable data engineering.
What challenges have you encountered in integrating diverse data sources within uMotif’s platform, and how have you addressed them?
The diversity of data in clinical trials, from subjective patient-reported outcomes to objective health data measurements and third-party healthcare data presents both a technical and governance challenge. One of the key issues is ensuring interoperability across formats and standards, especially when working with global trials that span different regulatory environments.
To address this, we are developing a modular integration framework that uses standardized APIs and adheres to CDISC and HL7 FHIR where appropriate. We are actively investigating ways to do automated data validation and harmonization, so that data from disparate sources can be normalized into a cohesive dataset with minimal manual intervention. Our pipelines are monitored end-to-end to ensure data integrity, and we work closely with sponsors and partners to establish clear specifications early in the trial lifecycle.
Looking ahead, what innovations in data delivery and integration are you most excited about, and how do you envision them impacting uMotif’s services?
One area I’m particularly excited about is the advancement in real-time data streaming and federated data models. As clinical trials move increasingly toward decentralized and hybrid formats, the ability to process and analyze data at the edge—or as it’s collected—opens new possibilities for adaptive study designs and earlier interventions.
Additionally, the rise of AI/ML in data cleaning and pattern recognition will allow us to proactively flag anomalies, improve data quality, and ultimately reduce time to insight. At uMotif, we’re exploring how these technologies can be safely and ethically embedded in our platform, always with a focus on regulatory compliance and patient privacy.
In the near term, we’re also focused on increasing transparency and collaboration across stakeholders. That includes dashboards and tools that empower sponsors and sites to interact with their data more dynamically, shortening feedback loops and improving operational efficiency, collaboration, and everything that makes uMotif a fun, exciting place to work day in and day out.
How does your team ensure data privacy and regulatory compliance while maintaining agility in data delivery and integration?
Balancing compliance with agility is one of the most important and nuanced aspects of our work. We operate in a highly regulated environment, supporting studies in multiple regions—each with its own data protection frameworks, like GDPR in Europe or HIPAA in the U.S. Our team embeds privacy and security into the foundation of our data architecture through a “privacy by design” approach.
We use rigorous access controls, end-to-end encryption, and anonymization techniques to protect personal data at every stage of the pipeline. Our systems are built to be audit-ready, with clear lineage and traceability for every data point we handle.
At the same time, we’ve architected our platform to remain modular and API-driven, allowing us to respond quickly to client needs and integrate with evolving technologies. Regular internal audits, automated compliance checks, and close collaboration with our legal and regulatory teams ensure that speed never comes at the expense of safety or ethics. This dual focus enables us to maintain high agility without compromising on trust, which is foundational to both patient participation and sponsor confidence.
Connect with Steve on LinkedIn to arrange a meeting, or to discuss more about how uMotif’s eCOA/ePRO platform can transform patient engagement in your next study.