Focusing on Site Needs and Challenges: Quick Tips for Sponsors/CROs

Potts: Listen to what your site is telling you. Listen to the patient population that you're looking to reach out to. The site will know their patients better than anyone else. The sponsor and the CRO might know the condition more, they might know the science more, they will certainly know the study better, but the trial sites, you can't get away from the fact that the trial sites know their patients very, very well, and have probably had very lengthy relationships looking after the patients in their community. They will know what the bus schedule is. They will know that patients who live in one end of town, it's going to take perhaps two changes of bus and walking and leaving a really early or late part of the day in order to get to take part in a trial. All of those things matter, so allow the site an opportunity to voice what they think will work.

Davidson: Similar to the phrase, “Happy wife, happy life,” if you have happy sites and sites that are engaged and get through the study startup process, that hopefully translates to their ability to enroll patients, and also not just enroll patients, but to reduce the compliance issues that they're going to have throughout the study. If you can focus on training, if you can focus on engaging with that site and study startup, in addition to the conduct part of the study, then hopefully that translates into better quality patient enrollment.