In this season of wish lists and resolutions, moving seamlessly cross-communicative clinical trials technologies that can be utilized across sites and sponsors on an ongoing basis from the “nice to have” category into the “must-have” one doesn’t have to be dismissed as a miracle that will never see the light of day, an industry observer of trends in technology says.
“We know that the demand at the site level for studies is growing and the workforce capacity is shrinking,” notes Bree Burks, RN, MSN, Vice President of Strategy for Veeva Systems, who will present on “The Clinical Research Technology Reboot: Are We Getting it Right?” at the ACRP 2025 gathering in New Orleans, La., this April. “Sites in particular are really hurting for resources and qualified staff. In this kind of environment, and in recognition of how technology training on products that don’t often ‘talk to’ each other is the number one reason sites are delaying study start-ups, I would argue that getting a technology reboot right is actually critical for the entire industry.”
Burks says that her conference talk will focus on the lessons the technologically fragmented clinical research enterprise can learn from disruptive technology changes that propelled other industries into being everyday parts of our lives—in companies such as Uber, Amazon, Zillow, and Airbnb.
“The idea is that technology revolutions have already infiltrated many parts of our lives, and I think it’s interesting and urgent to consider how we can draw parallels between those situations and what we need to do in our industry to have similarly seamless, end-to-end experiences for customers—whether by that term we mean sites, sponsors, patients, vendors, or any other stakeholders,” Burks adds. “The end goal is to be able to easily exchange information and avoid duplicative work using standardized technologies between parties with the kind of connectivity we simply don’t have now in the industry.”
In part, that will mean that sites and sponsors will have to unlearn some bad habits. For example, Burks notes, the habit of acquiring technology that becomes so customized to a single organization that it is more of a hindrance than a helper when communicating in real time with other systems in the larger world of Big Data involved in clinical research. It could also go a long way toward seeing clinical research treated as a regular part of clinical care in the healthcare environment, she says.
“What you should be seeing is more companies setting up streamlined systems that others can ‘buy into’ for mutual benefit as all the different players in studies interact with one another,” Burks says. “We’re not going to get to that Nirvana of having most of our information truly connected—shared across sites and sponsors and patients—if we keep clutching our customized systems to our chests out of fear of change.”
The Clinical Research Technology Reboot: Are We Getting it Right?
Join Bree at ACRP 2025 [April 24-27; New Orleans, La.], where she will challenge all attendees, from novice to expert, to intentionally evolve our own industry based on what others have already learned. View complete schedule.
It’s not that current technologies, in and of themselves, are the entire problem, Burks adds. Also at issue is how sponsors create variations in practices among sites because they are selecting the technologies, but not necessarily in cooperation with the sites.
“Yes, sponsors have to come together and start standardizing more, but sites have to have an equal seat at the table,” Burks says “In order to really bring all sides of the industry together and solve this problem, we have to have sites and sponsors participating on equal levels and having technology companies there as their partners—actively helping them compromise where needed and work more consistently together.”
Author: Gary Cramer
