Patient Recruitment Goes High-Tech

Clinical trial patient recruitment is arguably the most difficult aspect of pharmaceutical development, because it involves a variety of factors beyond study sponsors' control. The aggregation of data across 80 hospitals and 20 systems, for the purpose of understanding patients, doing feasibility studies, or engaging in decentralized recruitment, is the trend we're seeing." Nimita Limaye, PhD, is the vice president of research for the life sciences R&D strategy and technology division at the International Data Corporation (IDC), a market research and advisory firm specializing in the technology industry and headquartered in Boston, Mass. Limaye says the rise of social media-based patient recruitment has opened the door for sponsors and investigators to mine real-world data and to give patients a more central focus in research.

CRO Update: Where are Contract Research Organizations Headed?

Goliath dynamic The CRO space has seen a flurry of merger and acquisition activity in recent years. 2016 saw the merger of IMS Health with Quintiles, resulting in the birth of IQVIA. "In a commoditized service area, scale is important, because it gives you a depth of business development and sales coverage in the market," Getz explains. John Kreger, an equity research analyst with William Blair in Chicago, IL, says the pharma industry's source of innovation has aggressively shifted from large pharmaceutical companies to small biotech startups. Coldwell says most CROs will forge partnership agreements with DCT software developers, but three or four of the world's largest CROs are building DCT technology in-house.