Evidence & Performance Blog

Assessing the performance of CROs

Pharmaceutical and biotech companies want to speed up the research and development process whilst adhering to stricter guidelines. That’s why CRO’s are primarily selected on their scientific expertise and the cost/value ratio.

If R&D companies have always had a ‘feeling’ about their CRO, they are now more and more looking for facts in assessing their performance. This can only be done by “Choosing the right metrics” and “Deploying the right tools to evaluate these metrics”. Read more

Datatrak is highlighting ease of access to site performance metrics as a key differentiator as it launches the latest version of its platform eClinical product suite.

The latest version of eClinical suite is tracking metrics on investigative site performance in clinical trials. Read more

Christophe De Vleeschouwer, Manager Medical Operations for Cordis Medical (a Johnson & Johnson company) in Belgium, is exposing his thoughts and needs about measuring performance for large cohort clinical registry. Christophe has met us last week, and Alex took his confessions. Read more

We recently covered the topic about dispersed and disparate data.
Within one company, if you have a horizontal view across all trials, you will notice that data is stored in various formats, including diverse relational databases, text files, XML files, spreadsheets and certainly proprietary storage formats. There is no unique way of collecting, organizing and analyzing data.
The problem is to utilize of this critical data to assess the trial’s or program’s performance. Read more

Does the clinical trial area need performance tools? YES!
More and more companies start to think of a more efficient way to run clinical trials. What they want is easy: reduce the costs, reduce the time, and enhance the productivity.
How can they achieve this goal? By measuring the performance of the clinical trials and the service providers (Lab, EDC and other vendors, R&D …). Read more

In your opinion, and based on your experience, which of the following root causes is curbing good clinical trial performance:

- Lack of methodology to assess metrics of performance, discontinuing the enhancement of informed decision
- Disparate and dispersed critical data, making difficult to have an integrated report “dash board” at a glance
- Isolated teams, creating painful communication loops and useless delays
- Other, please explain..

Leave us a comment with your answer !
We will write an article about the root causes of bad performance very soon, and it would be very useful to have all your thoughts on it !

Thanks

As we know there is currently no reliable data on workload measurements nor proven methods which results in unrealistic performance expectations, excessive workload and inefficiency. It is crucial to know the time required to complete a dedicated task, the necessary resources to participate to a clinical trial.

The European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) has developed a Workload Measurement Instrument (WMI), used to record the time spent on main activites and the to calculate the cost of recruiting subjects to oncology trials.

Read more

If you want to understand why the pharmaceutical industry is currently undergoing a transition, I am recommending you to read this interesting report from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

PWC clearly “indicates that the current pharmaceutical industry business model is both economically unsustainable and operationally incapable of acting quickly enough to produce the types of innovative treatments demanded by global markets. In order to make the most of these future growth opportunities, the industry must fundamentally change the way it operates.”

As I mentioned earlier, it is clear that the Pharma. must quickly find the way to improve its R&D productivity. For us, it is only by measuring the performance that the companies are able to set goals and drive for improvement. This has been demonstrated in others business as finance, and ultimately will prove itself in Drug or Medical Device Development.

Do not hesitate to share your impression with us! 

Pharma 2020 : The vision - which path will you take?
A report from PricewaterhouseCoopers

YES ! This is just amazing!

Time between last patient’s visit and announcement of the clinical trial results took a bit less than seven weeks! Yes seven weeks, where it usually takes months, to get the final results out!
This happened to a sponsor with the help of Nextrials support and its EDC Software Prism!

Read more

ClinPhone, the world’s leading Clinical Technology Organization, will be acquired within the next couple of months.

CRO Parexel already made a $182 million bid, however Quintiles is discussing the acquisition azs well, and if they agree it will most likely be more than what Parexel offers.

Read more