Consider a DCT provider that collaborates
Partnerships within the decentralized clinical trial (DCT) model has rapidly increased in popularity, mainly because of the pandemic when sponsors and sites needed to mature their hybrid or decentralized clinical trial strategy very quickly. That meant incorporating decentralized approaches and technologies earlier and earlier in the study design and development phases. To better serve the customer to help combat the difficulties faced in early 2020, DCT providers like THREAD, started to partner with organizations in a few key areas to enable additional use cases. But when it comes to recruitment or data and analytics, for example, you want to know that DCT provider that you are using can meet the needs of your study.
How can a DCT provider meet all the needs of their customers? There are really 3 ways that this can be done, and we will start with the easy one:
1.They can’t.
They cannot offer the services that their customers need, so it falls back on the site and sponsors to find organizations with other technology or service capabilities that can work with their study, and it must be compatible with the DCT provider and might include using multiple different platforms.
2.They try doing it all on their own.
While this means that they are dedicated to serving their customers, it does not benefit the customer nor the study. Not only will it take an extremely long time to build out additional features, but you also run the risk of having mediocre technologies and services that have not been proven to work.
3.They partner and collaborate with other organizations.
A DCT provider that is truly dedicated to their customers will try to solve a customer’s problems by providing the best solutions to help their clinical trials. They will be partnering with the best organizations in the industry that provide the technology or services needed to their help customers have the best outcomes for their trials. The need to be able to modify a study based on a customer's needs is really going to provide the best results of that study. A DCT provider may not be able to solve all your problems right away, but if you have a technology or service that you need enabled, you want to be sure that the one you choose has that capability and is willing to work with you to enable those services on a case-by-case basis.
There is not one decentralized clinical trial technology company who has it all, so the key is to find one that can be flexible with your approach. If you have a specific company that you want to work with, in a particular area, a bonus would be that they are proactively trying to work with them to find solutions like building single sign-on or API's to make the study more comprehensive for everyone involved.