SCOPE Summit 2026: Elevating Patient Experience in Clinical Operations

In a recent video interview with Applied Clinical Trials at the 2026 SCOPE Summit, Miriam Dervan, founder & CEO of mdgroup, discussed how treating patient experience as a strategic investment—rather than a supporting activity—fundamentally reshapes clinical operations. Dervan explained how early patient engagement influences trial design, recruitment, and retention, particularly in complex studies, and why operational teams must account for individual patient needs rather than one-size-fits-all solutions. Looking ahead, she argued that best-in-class patient experience will be defined by empathy, respect, and sustained commitment—recognizing patients not as data points, but as partners whose trust underpins successful clinical research.

Editor's note: This transcript is a lightly edited rendering of the original audio/video content. It may contain errors, informal language, or omissions as spoken in the original recording.

ACT: What changes operationally when patient experience is treated as a strategic investment rather than a supporting activity?

Dervan: Absolutely, because far too—for far too many years—we haven't really been thinking about the patient. I'm in the industry a long time, and it's great to know now that, from an operational perspective, our sponsors and our clients are focusing on the patient. They're having patient engagement departments, so you've got to invest in that—having those people who are focusing on the patients for their studies.

I was just talking to Karen and Leslie at Parexel, and to hear their initiatives are just amazing. But along with that, then from an investment perspective and an operational perspective, we have to be out there talking to the sites, meeting with the patients and the patient advocacy groups, and talking to them. So that's also an investment.

But then what that leads on to is you are engaging with the patient at the trial design stage. So from an operational perspective, we have to understand the patient's needs and the patient's wants, get them into the trial design, listen to their pain points, as well as the sites, because the sites are, of course, there to hugely and massively support the patients.

So from an operational investment perspective, that, to me, is the best investment that we've been doing over the last number of years. It wasn't done before, but thankfully, it's being done now.