Integrating Clinical Technology

ACT: What are some challenges you are currently seeing with the integration of clinical technology?

Easy: That is a huge issue because clinical technology just continues to proliferate, so whilst we keep adding such a variety of different tech stacks—every time we do, it means more integrations are needed, because, again, it should be about the user experience being seamless and not burdensome. It's interesting, because there's a stat that comes to mind; around since 2010, so a little while ago now, the global R&D spending on CROs and technology vendors has beyond doubled. However, it’s not making trials faster, we're actually now seeing longer study timelines than ever before, and I think this speaks to some of the integrations around technology and some of the challenges. Even when we start to think about integrations, like how we're adding AI (artificial intelligence), we do have the ability to transform what we're doing, but because of some of the regulatory issues that we have, I do find that that some of these integration and all the various products because of our distinct needs in the life sciences space around privacy, precision, and transparency, this all adds up to the challenges of integrations. When we think that each sponsor chooses a different ecosystem, and each site works with more than one sponsor, this is why this is such a challenge that we're seeing.

For me, I think it's really important that we as an industry start to think about solutions here. There is something that we've been working on at IQVIA. I won’t do a sales pitch, but we call it One Home for Sites. The goal here is to bring all of these technologies together, so from a science perspective, it doesn't matter which CRO, it doesn't matter which vendor, they can enter a study regardless, through one place. That's something that we've been working on with many partners, I'm very excited about, and happy to talk to anyone that wants to learn more.