Over the years of training has gathered momentum as drug developers see to shorten the time necessary to take research to market. We are delighted to once again be part of the upcoming Clinical Outsourcing World conference which aims to discuss diverse topics of interest to decision-makers in the outsourcing process. We will be joining over 200 delegates on Feb 6th and 7th in London to dig deeper into the role IT plays in this decade’s clinical trials landscape.
Virtual Trials – our basic premise that increasingly the patient-centric view will prevail, we will be following the panel on virtual trials with interest. With concerns about sharing health records for patients, their treating physicians and investigators, case studies of successful experiments could shed valuable light on necessary policies. IT will play a critical role in co-ordinating collaboration, and engaging primary care physicians. However, questions remain about the role of outsourcing players in such technology-enabled programmes.
Clinical research networks – formed to enable participation by patients and healthcare professionals, to integrate health research and patient care, to improve quality, speed and co-ordination of clinical research and to increase collaboration with industry partners, clinical research networks (CFN) have flourished. But questions remain about how sponsor companies can truly access the full networks’ strengths, and whether they are a better fit for early or late phase trials. Given the role of outsourcing partners, best practices on interfaces between the network model with the CRO model are yet to emerge. Most significantly, with analytics in mind, CRNs ability to deliver quality data of a standard required by industry and regulator remains a hot topic.
Processes supporting the outsourcing relationship – Sometimes it is the paperwork that holds things up. One of the topics that will be pursued in a panel discussion is clinical outsourcing bureaucracy and bottlenecks. To ensure cost effective, efficient and consistent performance against the increasing pharma and biotech regulatory demands means balancing vigilance with practicality. Streamlining processes includes tackling major pressure points that span the spectrum from making the decision to do a clinical trial through to recruitment and data management. And maturing practices across the industry mean best practices on ownership of deliverables, measurement and accountability are evolving fast.