Listening And Supporting Your Sites Makes Clinical Trials More Efficient

By Kerry Leyden and Caroline Potts, Medical Research Network

Running a clinical trial requires significant time, investment, and site staff resources. However, research sites across the industry increasingly lack the essential resources needed to complete trials. The entire drug development process can be negatively impacted when sites are overburdened. But with the right strategies, solution providers focused on site and clinical trial success can help sites overcome their unique challenges and deliver efficient clinical trials.

Clinical research sites can face many challenges because running a clinical trial is not simple. First, site staff attrition is occurring at unprecedented rates across all levels, including nurses and study coordinators. Without adequate personnel, sites cannot complete studies or begin new ones. Budget and timeline constraints, lack of clinical trial experience or poor prior performance in clinical research, geographical isolation, scheduling constraints, and sites’ other commitments create further obstacles to success.

Given the lack of resources, it's unsurprising that many sites can struggle to recruit enough patients for clinical trials, especially for rare disease studies, or fail to meet diversity requirements. Additionally, studies themselves are much more complex than in years past. Different sites have different challenges. Building a single-solution model that fits all scenarios is impossible. Thus, it’s critical to offer flexibility to meet sites where they are. What is designed for one site might not work for another.