Abstract

There is industry wide recognition that unifying clinical processes and systems is necessary to address the growing need to improve the quality and speed of study execution, as trials become increasingly complex and specialized.

Clinical information and process silos are the primary issues for CROs, with the integration of multiple applications reported as the top challenge they face with clinical solutions. Many of the legacy systems in use today lack the functionality needed to enable true end-to-end processes, visibility, and collaboration. For this reason, CROs are increasingly looking to a modern, unified clinical model to tackle these challenges and enable faster, higher quality studies. Hereafter we report some of the main results coming from the Veeva 2017 unified clinical operations survey: annual CRO report.

With clinical trial outsourcing predicted to exceed 70% by 2020, Clinical Research Organizations (CRO) are under tremendous pressure to increase study execution and quality against a backdrop of increasing complexity across the clinical lifecycle. This has prompted industrywide recognition of the need for a unified clinical model that is defined by end-to-end processes and systems, seamless collaboration across the clinical ecosystem, and greater insights from metrics to increase performance.

All CRO report the need to unify their clinical applications. The top three most important drivers for unifying clinical applications are faster study execution (64%), cost savings (62%), and improved study quality (58%). It is not surprising that cost savings rank higher for CROs than sponsors (56%) as containing costs is necessary to deliver competitive advantage. Reducing the burden on Information Technology (IT) resources to support and maintain multiple systems is an important cost containment strategy, with more than a third (38%) of CROs versus less than a quarter (24%) of sponsors citing the need to reduce IT burden as a key driver for unification.

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