Willingness To Collaborate: Progress In Building A Single Home For Sites Provides Evidence Of An Industry Ready To Solve Large-Scale Challenges

By Aruna Adhikari

Clinical trials and drug submissions once relied heavily on vast amounts of paperwork. With the advent of document management and electronic data capture systems, trial sponsors began transitioning from physical study binders to laptops equipped with specialized software. By 2010, the widespread use of the internet enabled sponsors to grant access to these systems via URLs, fueling the growth of cloud-based trial technology and study portals.

Today, however, clinical research sites juggle dozens of software applications, each requiring unique usernames and passwords, as they complete daily tasks in clinical trials. This "technology overload" limits the number of trials sites can handle simultaneously.

In the early 2020s, IQVIA Technologies began connecting over 20 software products, developed in-house or acquired, with single sign-on (SSO) as a baseline design goal. As site capacity challenges increased after COVID, IQVIA’s product strategists recognized the need to unify the entire clinical ecosystem—not just IQVIA products—to create a seamless experience. This vision of a "single home" for all trial-related systems aimed to ease the burden of technology overload by providing sites with a single-login platform. However, the project faced key uncertainties: Would it be technically feasible? And would competing technology companies participate on the platform despite competitive concerns?