Dimitris Tziogas, local trial manager at a biotechnology company in Greece, said there is always room for improvement in clinical trials. “The trend, of course, in the industry is to move away from paperwork or logs or lots of forms and move towards technologically advanced solutions like platforms or artificial intelligence that will help us get the information and share it even more easily and securely and ethically,” he said.
However, in Greece, he has observed a need for more confidence in technology in order to overcome administrative obstacles. He said it’s not unusual for research site staff to view technology with indifference. “To be honest,” he said, “they have too many systems to use, too many functions, too many forms to fill out.”
Tziogas oversees the delivery of clinical trials at the country level – specifically in Greece. He said, “What I could say fascinates me about the position is, without a second thought, the coordination that exists and the seamless collaboration between so many roles and people from all over the world for this absolutely desirable outcome, which is what? That is, to bring effective and innovative treatments to patients as early as possible to improve their quality of life.”
Technology is a big part of that operational process. During his career in clinical trials, Tziogas has used StudyTeam technology on three trials so far. He joined us for a Q&A to highlight key benefits of StudyTeam for both sites and sponsors. See how the platform can improve clinical trial operations.
A: “The common practice for pre-screening was to send logs with the relevant information to the sponsor. These logs were either filled out by the site and sent either to the CRA or to a dedicated mailbox of the sponsor or vendor.
“The collection of the information used to take quite a bit of time and it was not consistent. The sites had difficulties complying with regularly sending information as well as the CRA constantly encouraging this process, with consecutive reminders. Many times the pre-screening logs would stop coming at some point, resulting in gaps in the trial master files.”
A: “What I can say that I definitely enjoy in StudyTeam is its real-time nature. You save valuable time from follow ups at the sites, because really, in real life, you get to see multiple communications from all the stakeholders. Among these stakeholders I include the doctors here as well, who tend to require several reminders to pass the information to the sponsor. You can customize your space, you can see different views and get information at the study level or site level, it's all useful metrics. These are the features that make it more valuable – the fact that you can do everything in real time and get the information much simpler without doing these constant follow ups with emails, etc. An average of 2-3 hours per week can be saved just by using StudyTeam.”
A: “Using a platform like this encourages sites to make better use of information on potential patients with a completely user-friendly environment where everything is provided and structured. They can avoid time-consuming information collection through logs in which quite a few mistakes can be made."
A: “It helps us understand how actively a site is pre-screening and what potential difficulties they may be encountering with certain inclusion/exclusion criteria. And these observations can help us effectively in the discussion we have with investigators about what ultimately is the pathway, so to speak, that will lead the right patient at the right time to the protocol.”
A: “Make an introductory call with a OneStudyTeam representative so that, at first, all the features of the platform are optimally presented. Only then can one be fully confident of the benefits of the service. This is something we do in practice, which is to constantly encourage CRAs, at whichever stage of the study, to make these calls with our study sites, even with sites that express an initial indifference or even negativity over the use of the platform. In other words, our motto is in fact, 'first find out about the service and then decide freely on its use.’ I think, otherwise, you can't be sure whether it can be beneficial in your work or not.”
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