Not What I Expected From A Vendor Conference

By Dan Schell, Chief Editor, Clinical Leader

Throughout my nearly 25 years at this company, it’s been rare that I or any of my editorial colleagues would attend a vendor-sponsored industry conference. Simply put, we avoid these so as not to seem biased toward any company that could be an advertiser. It’s that age-old practice of separating “church and state.”

So, I was always surprised when I would find out that my predecessor, Ed Miseta, was attending one of Veeva’s annual summits. When I asked him once why he did this, I remember him telling me that these weren’t your typical “shove our solutions down your throat” type of conferences. Instead, he insisted that he would connect with enough KOLs at multiple sponsor companies to feed his funnel of editorial for a few weeks. That’s why, when I saw the company’s R&D and Quality summit was coming up in Boston, I decided to attend.

And as usual, Ed was right.

WHAT I WAS HEARING

Aside from casually meeting people in the various networking sessions and at meals, I had formal interviews with the following:

• Brian Johnson, VP, R&D technology, Takeda
• Dr. Christina Brennan, SVP, clinical research, Northwell Health (a site network of 21 hospitals and over 900 ambulatory sites)
• John McAdory, VP, clinical operations, CG Oncology (late-stage clinical biopharma)

I’ll summarize my conversations with each of these experts in subsequent articles, but let me give you a quick recap of some of the issues and topics I found interesting that were not related to those interviews.

Let’s start with a conversation I had with an attendee who obviously worked in the clinical trials field but was experiencing for the first time what it is like to be a part of a trial. They had enrolled their young daughter in an observational trial, so there was no IP being used. They were surprised at how much time and effort they had to go through to participate, and they specifically cited the consent process as being lengthy. There was some reimbursement for participation via a reloadable prepaid card, but they admitted that the travel, scheduling, and parking “must be a real barrier and challenge to patients who would need to be visiting a site on a regular basis for an interventional trial.”

In the panel session “Optimizing Your Clinical Data Foundation,” someone suggested that perhaps “patient choice” should be the new name for DCTs. It was a similar sentiment I had heard expressed in the past by other execs I’ve interviewed and during our Clinical Leader Live “Last Year's DCT Is Today's Clinical Trial.” DCTs are more than just a fully remote trial; there are various components and approaches that “decentralize” a trial. One person noted that although we all want to try to make trials as convenient as possible for patients, instituting some type of “choose your own style of trial” for a large Phase 3 may be unrealistic from an operational standpoint. But a hybrid approach is still better than giving no option.

In one session I heard a speaker say that “eCOA is the newest addition to clinical data, and it is ready.” That lines up with what Julie Dietrich told me in my recent article for Clinical Tech Leader, “Early Planning Trumps eCOA Bells & Whistles.” But then, in another session, the moderator randomly asked how many people in the audience were using eCOA. About half of the room’s attendees raised their hands. Then he asked, of those people, how many have had no problems with their eCOA. No hands went up. I’m guessing Robert Goldman, who I interviewed for the article “Some Truths You Can't Avoid About eCOA” would have been nodding his head after seeing that impromptu survey.

Finally, I heard a fair amount of discussion around the need to help sites with their various data challenges. One person called today’s status quo “a nightmare web of integrations that has to change.” Events like the Save Our Sites conference are amplifying the voice of sites and their ongoing frustrations with data- and technology-related issues (among others). Of course, this isn’t a new problem, and it’s not one that will go away with one solution that will claim to standardize and simplify a site’s tech experience. As one speaker cautioned, no one solution will work for all sites.

One of the unintended benefits of attending this event was that I got to meet and hang out with some editors from other companies and publications. I have respect for anyone who does this job, and it was great getting to know the people behind the words. Thus, I encourage you to connect with and follow Moe Alsumidaie, Kelly (Scribner) Doering, Chris Slawecki, and Andy Studna.

Perhaps my impressions of vendor-sponsored “user conferences” are antiquated and come from 20+ years ago when I was writing about data collection technologies when these events were essentially dog-and-pony shows on steroids. At this summit, I learned a lot, conducted some informative interviews, and made plenty of great connections. That’s a win in my book, and I’m grateful to Veeva for inviting me.