By Heather Grey, SVP/GM of RWD and Clinical Trials
The need for diversity in clinical trials is well understood; it’s fundamental to supporting health equity and innovation across the healthcare continuum. But, improving clinical trial diversity in a sustainable, scalable way continues to be a challenge for drug developers, academic institutions, and clinical research overall.
Academic institutions are responsible for the majority of clinical trial research, initiating approximately 60 to 70 percent of new trials each year. But, most patient populations aren’t visiting academic research hospitals for treatment.
They’re being treated at community-based sites.
The Resource Challenge at Non-Academic Research Sites
Accessing diverse patient populations means going directly into the communities where they reside and engaging with the sites where they’re being treated: community cancer centers and hospitals, independent healthcare institutions, etc.
These sites don’t just unlock access to more diverse patient populations; they can serve as key contributors to clinical trials at all phases.
In fact, many community-based sites are already participating in clinical research. A recent survey from Deloitte found that, of 226 health centers surveyed, 87 percent were either currently conducting research or were interested in conducting research. Among those currently engaged in research, 53 percent were actively involved in clinical research specifically, with most serving as participant sites and acting as co-principal investigators.
However, that same survey found that 81 percent of respondents did not have dedicated staff to perform research, and 88 percent did not have budget or resources dedicated to do so. Unsurprisingly, the biggest barriers cited were time or workforce constraints (94 percent).
The Benefits of Community Site Participation
Improving diversity in clinical trials means empowering qualified and experienced community sites to participate in clinical research.
Addressing the pain points of non-academic research sites unlocks a broader range of contributing sites, particularly those in underrepresented communities, and larger patient populations. This approach not only promotes greater demographic diversity in clinical trials but also opens up access to the right pools of participants, enriching the data collected and surfacing opportunities to advance research outcomes.
For independent healthcare institutions and their patients, the benefits are equally substantial: Access to clinical research improves community health outcomes and engagement, fostering stronger relationships between healthcare providers and the local population while also building trust and encouraging sustained participation in healthcare initiatives.
Partnering to Empower Community Sites
Technology alone won’t solve the resource constraints these community sites face. Finding skilled resources can also be unattainable for most.
Partnerships can help.
Academic research centers frequently leverage external partnerships to enhance their ability to conduct clinical trials. Non-academic sites can (and should) do the same. Collaborating with trusted partners provides strategic support that enables community-based sites to overcome resource challenges and streamline operations as needed. Together, sites and partners define what collaboration looks like, ensuring their solutions that are both practical and scalable.
Below, we outline three key areas of opportunity where an external partner can bolster the infrastructure of qualified community sites and enhance their capability to participate in clinical trials.
1. Data Entry and Validation
Partners can take on data entry and validation efforts to ensure data is entered correctly, promptly, and uniformly into the electronic data capture (EDC) system. Expert teams can handle large volumes of data quickly while applying advanced validation techniques to identify and correct discrepancies in real time. This minimizes errors and maintains high data integrity, keeping the study on track while allowing site staff to focus on more patient-centric tasks.
2. Data Curation and Abstraction
A collaborative approach to data curation and abstraction offers a comprehensive solution to handling complex, multi-source trial data. Entrusting these tasks to experts helps to ensure data is harmonized, standardized, cleaned, and transformed into structured formats for accurate analysis.
The combination of these processes accelerates data extraction and ensures accuracy and completeness. By offloading some or all of the technical work to specialized teams, in-house staff can focus on optimizing trial outcomes.
3. Centralized Data Governance and Protocol Management
Supporting non-academic site participation may require not only data handling support but also comprehensive clinical trial management solutions that reduce the administrative burden on site staff. By collaborating with these partners for centralized data governance and protocol management, sites can benefit from end-to-end trial support — pre-screening and eligibility verification, patient tracking, protocol-specific database development, and more — ensuring that every step of the clinical trial process is streamlined, compliant, and efficient.
Conclusion
For non-academic sites looking to contribute to clinical trials, partnerships can be the key to unlocking success. External partners provide vital support, allowing these sites to participate and do so more efficiently while also ensuring resources aren’t diverted from high-quality care delivery. The benefits are far-reaching.
Empowered community site participation helps enrich the quality of the data collected but also ensures that the outcomes of clinical trials better reflect the populations they aim to serve. For community sites, partnerships are not just a means of managing the workload — they are a pathway to making meaningful contributions to both clinical research and health equity.
Learn More
Interested in learning more about challenges and trends in clinical trial data management?
Download our recent white paper to learn how the right partner can help to improve data quality, ensure required timelines are met, and streamline the process of making data research-ready to facilitate the success of clinical trials.