Navigating Diversity and Digital Innovation at the Site-Level

In a recent video interview with Applied Clinical Trials, Jimmy Bechtel, vice president, site engagement, SCRS, discussed key challenges and initiatives at the site-level. AI's impact on sites is significant, with uncertainty around its implementation. Diversity requirements pose challenges, and technology overload is a major issue due to inconsistent tech stacks and financial burdens on sites. Bechtel also highlighted some initiatives that SCRS is currently working on and gave an overview of the most recent Global Site Solutions Summit.

A transcript of Bechtel’s conversation with ACT can be found below.

ACT: What are some initiatives or projects SCRS is currently working on and what excites you most about them?

Bechtel: The third one that I'd mentioned is the Digital Innovation Initiative. This has been a program that we've had in place since 2019, but it continues to provide innovation for sites. We produce a lot of really great things from that program, like a virtual-capable trials training, so a foundational training for sites looking to understand what it means to participate in trials where some of the elements are conducted virtually or decentralized.

We’re working now on what we're calling the Challenges and Solutions Charter. We know that there's a lot of challenges when it comes to conducting trials with decentralized elements. We spend a lot of time as an industry talking about those challenges and talking about the solutions, so what this initiative aims to do is put a pin in the specific challenges as well as the solutions associated with them, and then gain commitment from some of our partners to say, “Yes, I agree that that is the challenge and the solution to that challenge, so I'm going to commit to implementing that solution within my organization based on a timeline, a reasonable timeline that we're going to determine in this multi-stakeholder development process.” That's just one exciting new development that we're working on in that program.

Finally, the SCRS IncluDE initiative. This is our legacy diversity initiative. We are calling it the IncluDE initiative now, and they're doing some really, really great work as far as allowing sites to participate in a tool we've developed called the Diversity Site Assessment tool, or the DSAT tool. That's an assessment that sites can log onto our website and take and understand how they fare where they sit on the spectrum of their ability to recruit and retain diverse patient populations. We recently launched a sub-questionnaire related to that tool around seen and unseen disabilities, so being able to treat and accommodate patients with disabilities. Finally, we're working on a sexual and gender minorities sub-questionnaire as well, an SGM-sub questionnaire that will be sometime into the new year.