The end of the year is near and naturally, we all become retrospective. 2021 was a difficult year for most of us, despite the scientific progress that gave us hope. Yet, even difficult years come with a lot of lessons and many opportunities for growth.
This year, instead of counting down the most read posts on our blog, we’ll review the resources we created in 2021 that brought value and sparked conversation. We hope to create many more in 2022, bring you even more insights from industry leaders, and participate in even more discussions around patient centricity, optimizing clinical trial feasibility, and introducing innovation in the way clinical research is planned and conducted.
Navigate the DCT providers landscape
In 2021, we created two new whitepapers to help industry professionals navigate the current research landscape. The first one, our Ultimate Guide to Virtual Clinical Trial Vendors, addressed a ‘hot topic’ in research that became even more prominent as Covid-19 changed the game.
Decentralized or completely virtual clinical trials are no longer merely a secondary option. A poll among our 1 476 LinkedIn followers revealed that the industry is now considering DCTs not just as a plan B but as a viable way to design and conduct a trial.
To do that, DCT providers are essential. Whether you’re a Sponsor looking to partner with a CRO with relevant capabilities, or you are directly involved in the design of a DCT and you need to rely on home nursing providers and eConsent solutions – the Guide will help you find the best partners for your decentralized/hybrid study.
Reduce time spent on RFPs by 30%
We partnered with many companies this year that share our ultimate mission of bringing research closer to patients. CRO and Sponsor companies that realize making clinical research accessible to patients starts at the feasibility stage of a new study – not later on when the trial suffers delays.
Our biggest joy this year was to find out that we had helped one of our partners, Bionical Emas, reduce the time they spend on RFPs by 30%. You can learn how in our joint case study “Highly Specialized Data in No Time: How Bionical Emas Assessed Risk Around a Pandemic-Time Trial”.
This is exactly what we set out to do when we first developed TrialHub – help overwhelmed feasibility experts design a robust clinical trial strategy in less time. We do this by streamlining and analyzing data from 80 000 sources and quickly connecting feasibility teams to our network of local country advisors.
Dive deep into DCT regulations and considerations
We partnered on a webinar with compliance expert Edye T. Edens, Clinical Research IO’s co-founder Raymond Nomizu and MACRO Trials’ Chief Operating Officer Daniel Perez to discuss how research sites can win with decentralized trials.
A lot of topics were covered: from regulatory compliance and eConsent privacy to a change in the CRO business model. You can watch all 7 parts on our blog.
How Covid-19 changed China’s clinical research
Our partners from Proswell Medical, a mid-size Chinese CRO part of our local experts network, provided us with insights into China’s clinical research landscape in 2020 and 2021. What happened to clinical trials immediately after the outbreak? How did regulatory bodies respond? Were decentralized modalities adopted? And how is clinical research doing now, more than a year after the outbreak?
You can read more in ‘How COVID-19 Changed Research: The Clinical Trials Landscape in China’.
What would a ‘race for patients’ look like?
Among the many articles we published on the blog this year, one, in particular, brought heated discussions to our LinkedIn page.
In ‘Not Enrolling Patients? The One Explanation You Haven’t Considered Yet’ our CEO Maya Zlatanova takes an anecdote shared with her to start a conversation about the way sites’ business model can impact recruitment. Is pay-per-enrolled-patient a good strategy in the face of clinical trial competition? And is the only solution to outbid competing trials?
The central question Maya poses is – how would things look differently if we were ‘racing for patients’ instead? How would the business model change? How would patient recruitment strategies be restructured?
If that’s a topic close to your heart, share your thoughts in the comments.
