PPD has launched a new service aimed at clinical research training for doctors and healthcare workers at new sites to help them stay the course.
Currently, around half of principal investigators who partake in a clinical trial for the first time don’t again, with complexity of trials as the main reason, according to research by the FDA.
PPD’s SiteCoach service aims to try and combat this by “providing advanced clinical research training, coaching and support to physicians, hospitals and academic institutions that are new to clinical research.”
By doing this, PPD said it aims to “enhance a new site’s probability of being successful in clinical research and to offer PPD customers access to additional sites that can participate in future studies.”
It also hopes this will mean a new site will be used again and allow a great range of studies nearer to patients.
The SiteCoach training is done between site qualification and activation as well as before, during and after the study to “provide a full continuum of support.” This can be done virtually, face to face or both.
“This new model is an easy-to-use program for health care practices that are interested in joining the research community so as to offer their patients new treatment opportunities,” said Rhonda Henry, vice president of site collaboration and patient centricity for PPD.
“Training more health care providers to conduct clinical research will give patients greater access to trials closer to home, making it more convenient for patients to participate. By placing more trials in the community, we also intend to enhance participation of patient populations traditionally underrepresented in clinical research.”