How Sites Work with Different Types of Labs

In a recent interview with Applied Clinical Trials, Kelli Aufderheide, director, laboratory decentralized trial solutions, IQVIA Laboratories, discussed the benefits of central and local labs for clinical trials. Central labs offer harmonized test menus, standardized data collection, and global reach, ensuring consistent results across labs. Local labs, often co-located with investigator sites, provide quick turnaround times crucial for urgent patient care. In a world of complex clinical trials, stakeholders should support sites by focusing on planning, training, and incorporating feedback to streamline processes and reduce manual work.

A transcript of Aufderheide’s conversation with ACT can be found below.

ACT: As it is important to take in the site perspective on their work with central labs or local labs, is there a noticeable difference in how they work with each?

Aufderheide: Yes, absolutely. There are complexities from a site perspective, and working with central labs, we're not the only central lab out there, and I think it would be safe to say that every central lab does things a little bit differently. If you have investigator sites that are working with multiple central labs, they are having to know from each lab perspective what is expected of them. The kits may be designed a little bit different, the way that they manage their supplies and manage their data and everything might be done a little bit different from each of the central labs’ perspectives, so that adds complexity to the site model.

Another aspect is a lot of times we see that the investigator sites have a preference for local labs because they are familiar with them. They know they're going to get their results quicker than sending it to a central lab. One of the key features of a site perspective is if they're using a local lab, a lot of times that data still has to get into the central lab database or the sponsor’s data set. How does that happen? That may be a manual data entry by the site. It may require some kind of data uptake by the central lab or even by the CRO or the sponsor, so it adds a little bit of complexity to managing the data on the back end, and then it also will tend to add some manual work on the site's side.