Post-COVID Clinical Trial Performance Innovations

COVID has presented many challenges to the clinical trial industry over the past year.  These challenges have included:

• Moving from in-person to virtual events
• Difficulty in accessing clinical trial enrollees
• Ability to monitor the readiness of clinical trial investigators
• Reducing the variability of clinical trial execution

These challenges are not easily addressed by the same approaches leveraged in a pre-COVID operational framework.  The industry must adapt to the global “new normal”. 

The Boston Consulting Group studies the performance of companies relative to their commitment to innovation.  They identified five key attributes to driving innovation for a company.   Those include:

1. Setting a clear ambition
2. Establishing the right playing fields
3. Prioritizing performance management
4. Pushing project management
5. Developing talent and culture

Pro-ficiency can be a key partner in improving clinical trial performance on all five dimensions.

Setting a clear ambition

Our customers can improve clinical trial performance while simultaneously saving money by moving to virtual simulation training.  There is a reason why all of the critical job functions around the world learn via simulation rather than lectures.  Would any of us want our airline pilot trained via PowerPoint trapped on a Zoom call or in a hotel ballroom?  COVID has been a tipping point for sponsors to elevate their clinical trial performance by moving to simulation training through a partnership with Pro-ficiency.

Establishing the right playing field

Sponsors need to adapt to the changing needs of their investigators in a post COVID world.  Restrictive travel, shifting staff assignments and new on-site clinical demands are impacting the availability of investigators. Innovative sponsors are adapting to this new playing field by leveraging Pro-ficiency.  Sponsors entice more clinical investigators by offering the convenience and engagement of virtual simulation training.  New staff can be quickly trained on the protocol without being a drag on the productivity of the existing staff.  Pro-ficiency offers an on-demand training platform by only requiring a computer and an internet connection.

Prioritizing performance management

Leveraging clear, consistent, global KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are the key to better execution of clinical trials.  Pro-ficiency enables sponsors to gain insights on the readiness investigators and sites by providing real-time insight to their retention and understanding of protocol.  Empirically, this has been shown to reduce variation of practice and to reduce the potential for protocol amendments.

Pushing project management

Rather than jetting around the country and the globe, the clinical trial operations team can focus their energies on managing the launch of the trial.  This not only focuses the activities of the operations team but also minimizes the expense and downtime of travel.  The real-time tools from Pro-ficiency allow the team to quantitatively assessment assess the readiness of the global clinical trial investigator community.

Developing talent and culture

Our customers benefit from the talent assembled by Pro-ficiency in the disciplines of producing, creative direction, script writing, studio production, animation, video editing and the building of the simulation training to support their trial.  Pro-ficiency becomes the creative extension of your clinical team as the simulation training is created.  Once we develop the first simulation training, our sponsors consistently return to our team to partner with them on new clinical trial launches.

COVID has been a drag on parts of society while simultaneously unleashing innovations.  Let Pro-ficiency help you innovate your clinical trial performance.