Finding A Glass Slipper Service Provider To Fit Your Phase II/III Outsourcing Needs

By Sherry Hubbard-Bednasz

It’s Monday morning. The office is buzzing with chatter about the new clinical trial your company is going to sponsor. It’s a big one, but the checklist of niche needs is long, including a complex indication, specialized patient recruitment, and risk-based monitoring. You have some ideas about which CROs you think would fit the bill for outsourcing needs, but it will be a difficult decision. And so the provider selection process begins…

What if you were the sole decision maker in this situation? We at ISR like to ask survey respondents this very question when it comes to key outsourcing decisions. Such decisions are rarely made by a single individual; however, an aggregate measure of provider preference can be an important piece to understanding the larger puzzle of how these decisions are made. Let’s say a clinical operations director who works at a large pharma company says he prefers to partner with only large CROs for Phase III studies. Conversely, a seasoned project manager who works at a non-large sponsor company says a midsize CRO is her go-to for Phase II trials. In these scenarios, size stands out as a correlating factor. Large favors large, non-large favors non-large. Do we see this pattern among clinical outsourcers?