Tufts CSDD Suggest Old Habits Affecting Strategic Partnerships

"Despite the fact that a growing number of developers and CROs have now had three to five years of experience with these strategic relationships, speed and efficiency improvements and cost savings remain the exception," said Ken Getz, associate professor and director of sponsored research at Tufts CSDD in response to its most recent management report. And while strategic relationships between drug developers and contract research organizations(CROs) are generating innovative approaches to clinical trial design and execution, Getz added, "Old habits are slow to change and most drug developers are supporting practices that prevent them from integrating their strategic relationships and leveraging the value of these important collaborative models."

The study also found:

• Companies use a mix of outsourcing relationship models simultaneously on a per-study basis, including strategic and transactional relationships, along with in-house resources.

• Nearly all clinical studies outsourced site monitoring, and, in an overwhelming majority of studies, site identification and selection.
• In more than 70% of clinical studies, data management, medical monitoring, patient recruitment and retention, and statistical analyses were outsourced.
• For studies that were strategically outsourced, screen failure rates were higher and the frequency of protocol amendments was lower.

Read the full release here.