2025 SCRS Global Site Solutions Summit: Why Collaboration and Feedback Loops Are Essential in Clinical Research

ACT: What have been some of your key takeaways from the event so far?

Bechtel: Key takeaways from the event: We've talked a lot about how important communication and collaboration are. We've moved from this era where, “We need to communicate. We need to communicate,” it's the dead horse, if you will, to this era of how important collaboration and how you take communication to the next level and actually work in concert, in partnership with industry insights. The other big thing is the feedback loop. We talk a lot about, and we hear a lot of recurring themes, recurring challenges, recurring barriers at the site level, and I think we do a great job as an industry, especially in forums like this, of asking the questions and listening, but where the feedback loop starts to crumble a little bit is where we have an opportunity to then implement that feedback, but then also letting the user, the site, or the patient know that we've had an opportunity to implement that change like, “Yes, we listened and we did something, and this is how it's going to be different now, and this is how it's going to look going forward.” I think that's a really important aspect of change management, especially in an industry that tends to move pretty slowly.

In a video interview with Applied Clinical Trials at the 2025 SCRS Global Site Solutions Summit, Jimmy Bechtel, chief site success officer, SCRS, discussed the shift from mere communication to effective collaboration with industry partners. He highlighted the need for a robust feedback loop where industry insights are gathered, discussed, and implemented. Bechtel also underscored the importance of communicating back to users and patients that their feedback has been acted upon, which is essential for successful change management in a slow-moving industry.