Site Models of the Future: Finding Patients Faster

The overriding theme in clinical development is “get medicines to the patients faster”-and to that end, many different ideas are in the mix. One of the most significant is this evolution around the patient. To get approved medicines to patients in a clinical trial, you have to find the right patients. Many of the new solutions evolving to meet this need address patients at the site level.

At the DIA Annual Meeting in June, Christian Burns, vice president of BTC Network and ClinEdge; Sean Stanton, president and CEO at LifeCore Solutions; and Jennifer Byrne, co-founder and CEO of the newly launched Javara (see: https://bit.ly/2PzGRmE) presented “Rebuilding or Building a Research Site in the Year 2020.” During the session, they presented five site models and led the audience through an interactive discussion on how each of these are evolving to meet specific challenges. The models include virtual sites; specialty practice with research extension; dedicated research sites; large multi-physician health systems with research embedded;
and academic sites. The audience discussed the pain points around each model as follows:

Specialty practice pain points

• Physical space to conduct and house trials because of fast growth.

• Centralized monitoring, audit trails, monitoring schemes, paper source, QC.

• Investigators/training/getting physicians interested and aware of the research they offer.

• Differences in standard of care nursing vs. research coordinators.

• Physician time to invest in research, like everywhere burden with reps, time with patients, and EHR.

Large multi-physician practices pain points

• Sponsors label migraine study as neurology, so the study doesn’t go to the right physician group, i.e., primary care would see more migraine than neurology.

• Engaging communication and feasibility of the practices throughout the system.

• Getting to the C-suite with a solution.

Dedicated research site pain points

• Getting to community physicians to refer, recruit, and participate.

• Getting patients (still fear of placebo, education/awareness of clinical trials).

• Multi-vendor technology burden.

• Making payroll.

Due to the compelling topic and interest, the session didn’t have time to delve into the virtual or academic space pain points. In the table above, SCORR Marketing, our market research survey partner, and Applied Clinical Trials wanted to focus on up-and-coming organizations that are driving innovation in each of the site models. Because of space constraints, we chose one for each, but, of course, we will continue to feature these innovators in upcoming articles in our pages and online. 

- Staff report