Clinical Researcher—April 2019 (Volume 33, Issue 4)
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE
Jim Kremidas
I attend a lot of conferences. Like many of you, I enjoy the opportunity to reconnect with other professionals, colleagues, and friends to swap ideas and commiserate about the frenzied pace of change in the clinical trial industry.
I mention this because we’ve just wrapped up another successful ACRP annual conference. The ACRP 2019 gathering delivered some excellent speakers, thought-provoking panels, and a lot of fun at the Music City Center in Nashville, Tenn. However, I noticed something special this year I wanted to share with you. Whether it was during a Q&A or in a networking break, I had several people tell me they had changed specific ways of doing things because of what they’d learned at sessions last year. In several instances, attendees told me this year they had texted someone back in the home office during a session to find out if it was time to make a change based on what a session speaker was sharing.
Talk about actionable intelligence!
Conferences are a great way to inspire us to do even better work. They are invaluable when it comes to helping us better understand new rules and guidances by having direct access to regulatory officials. They are also a way to pay it forward by sharing your own knowledge with others.
That said, I can’t think of the last conference I attended where participants were using and sharing information gleaned at a session so quickly and tangibly as what I witnessed in Nashville earlier this month. Let’s keep the conversation going. We appreciate your feedback on how the event went (if you were there) and—based on any of our gatherings you have ever attended—on how we can do even better next year in Seattle.
We enjoy the opportunity to come face-to-face with so many members, volunteers, exhibitors, and partners at our annual meetings. We are extremely grateful for your support. Now that the ACRP staff have returned to their offices and begun to catch up on the more typical day-to-day work of the Association, I hope you’ll stay engaged with us by finding “news you can use” in this and every issue of Clinical Researcher and in our weekly e-newsletter, the CRbeat.
At ACRP, we’re committed to providing you with the most valuable data and information possible to help you do even better work in the challenging world of clinical trials. As always, I welcome your thoughts about how we can help support our shared mission of getting treatments to patients as safely and efficiently as possible.
Jim Kremidas (jkremidas@acprnet.org) is Executive Director of ACRP.
