Tune in to discover proven best practices that research sites can adopt to optimize their technology budgets. Kristin Surdam, Sr. Director, KOL & Strategy at Florence Healthcare, shares how these strategies not only ensure better resource allocation but also drive efficient research operations. Hear lessons learned from SCRS West: Clinical Tech & Innovation Summit, including strategies for sites and industry partners to overcome technology hurdles and ensure accurate financial planning in trials.
Tune in to discover proven best practices that research sites can adopt to optimize their technology budgets. Kristin Surdam, Sr. Director, KOL & Strategy at Florence Healthcare, shares how these strategies not only ensure better resource allocation but also drive efficient research operations. Hear lessons learned from SCRS West: Clinical Tech & Innovation Summit, including strategies for sites and industry partners to overcome technology hurdles and ensure accurate financial planning in trials.
Welcome and thank you for joining the Society for Clinical Research Sites for SCRS Talks. I'm Jimmy Bechtel, the Vice President of Site Engagement with SCRS. SCRS Talks is a program that allows our partners and those that we work closely with to take a few minutes to address issues of industry concern, share exciting achievements, and to learn more about our community. Today, we have Kristen Surtum, the Senior Director, KOL and Strategy with Florence Healthcare here to share with us some of the details and information around the sites, true costs and challenges with clinical technology. This was a panel that we had. At the SCRS West clinical tech and innovation summit back in Scottsdale. So Kristen's with us to help expand on that and share a little bit of what they talked about during that session. Kristen, it's great to have you with us. Really excited to talk about this very current, pressing and important topic in our community. So if you wouldn't mind, I'd love to let our listeners know a little bit more about you.
Kristin Surdam:Absolutely. Thank you, Jimmy. I have been in the clinical research industry for just over 15 years now. I started at a small independent site, so I have been at a small independent site as well as a large academic institution. Also have been at small and large CROs. So my roles in the past have included study coordination, project management even a coordinating center management for investigator initiated trials. I've since moved on to Florence Healthcare, and as you noted, I am their Senior Director of our Thought Leadership and Strategy areas. Here I have the opportunity to affect change on a wider scale throughout the industry, so it's, it's very exciting and site budgeting is something I've always been kind of passionate about, so. Thank you.
Jimmy Bechtel:Absolutely. Great to have you, Kristen. Florence Healthcare is a very engaged and active partner with SCRS and a great technology company in the industry. So we're grateful to have you with us today. As I mentioned, Kristen, you were part of that panel discussion back at SCRS West And really that session focused on how sites can understand their true costs of clinical technology. So can you start us off by sharing some of the takeaways from that session and how sites might start to accurately understand their costs and avoid some of those budget overruns that we are starting to see in some of our clinical trials?
Kristin Surdam:Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the main takeaways for me was that there, this falls into two kind of subcategories, right? Understanding and budgeting for the actual true cost of that clinical trial technology really falls into those two separate categories, one being that technology that's provided by the sponsors or CROs on a study by study basis. And then there's also site owned technology. And I think that budgeting appropriately for both of these is very important as they both do come with a cost and, and require that, that budget to be accurate in order to not overrun it. Some of the kind of recommendations after our discussion Knowing your site's workflows inside and out so that you have that information, that data to understand the efficiencies or maybe the inefficiencies that are going to occur when you use any clinical trial tech. And the other big thing takeaway was having open communication. I think sponsors and CROs aren't always aware of the tech that sites have or how it can help. them in their studies. So we already are logging into, I believe the average is still six systems per study. So that can add up rather rapidly. So if there's any opportunity to streamline those workflows, I think we are all here for it. Being able to know your workflows and, and having that strong communication, I think were the two high points out of that discussion.
Jimmy Bechtel:Thanks, Kristen. I want to hone in on that communication. It's a theme we hear a lot, but I think making sure that both parties. Involved are open and willing to engage in that active communication and enabling channels, right? Kind of putting your money where your mouth is because we hear sponsors and zeros who are primarily engaged in that one side of the budget negotiation often say that they're open to communicate, but we tend to hear otherwise from sites that sometimes breaks down or or isn't effective. So I think. A key takeaway there, as you had mentioned, is really enabling our teams at our sponsor and CRO organizations to facilitate that communication and being open and willing to to engage in that practice. So thank you for sharing some of that. Kristen, continuing on here then with some with our next question, can you share some of the key factors that sites might want to take under consideration when they're budgeting for technology management and technology implementation on their trials?
Kristin Surdam:Absolutely. And I'm so glad that you mentioned technology implementation because I do think that that's an area sometimes that's overlooked. The amount of time and effort and personnel that it's going to require to implement a technology solution is definitely something that you want to be aware of in order to budget appropriately for that. One of the primary things I think is knowing your vendors or your service providers. So. Understanding what the system does, the complexity of the system, how much training is required for different roles within your organization. These are things I think that sometimes we as sites can overlook, because we know that training is a part of every new study training throughout the study, of course. But different, different systems, different technology solutions have varying degrees of of training that's needed. So I think understanding that knowing whether there are open APIs, if those are offered by your service provider, can you integrate the system with some of your other commonly used systems? That goes back to trying to avoid any duplicative work on your team. And then another key factor, I think that our our industry is is typically risk averse, I think. So we're we're a little opposed to change sometimes. And I think that having a really good change management practice in your in your organization is going to be essential. Because if you can take into account a good change management You then are going to be more efficient in your implementation and your maintenance of any new technology that is entered in
Jimmy Bechtel:both really, really important points. Kristen. I think Being able and open and willing to accept change is important. I think a lot of sites are in general, I think a lot of the sites that have been probably that are listening to this conversation as well as sites that are attending the summits are probably the ones that are more apt to some of that change. But I do want to pinpoint in on the 1st thing that you had mentioned something that we tell sites all the time. From from the site side of things is that it's important for you to advocate for yourselves In that as early on as possible You're pushing you're asking your sponsor and cro partners for the information on those suppliers those vendors those technology companies That are going to be utilized on that clinical trial so that you have the most amount of time possible To prepare and to budget for those things. So I I really appreciate that you Not only brought that up and talked about that during the session, but also brought it up here in our conversation. Because again, that's something that we mentioned as being a really important step. But on the sponsor and CRO side of things for looking at the other side of this relationship, it's important that you're prepared to give that information to the sites as early as possible. So that they again can do their accurate forecasting and they're accurate costing.
Kristin Surdam:Absolutely. That is, is one of the main things I think that we need to do better at in terms of when we're looking at site feasibility, right? Is having that information available to the site so that they can make the best choices possible, provide the best, most accurate information. And knowing your vendors is It's very important. It's going to affect the time that it takes you to do all of your tasks within a study.
Jimmy Bechtel:Couldn't agree more. Let's flip the coin a little bit here, Kristen. And what are some of the common pitfalls or challenges that sites face when they're doing their cost estimations around technology? Further that then how do they overcome some of those pitfalls and challenges? I think we've alluded to some of those preemptive things that we can do with communication and getting information as early as possible, but maybe expand on those or bring up some other ones. If you have some other ideas for overcoming those.
Kristin Surdam:Absolutely. I think that. The biggest area that we have for improvement is truly understanding the time and effort that it's going to take to add any technology solution into our workflows. So if you have a really good understanding of your site's workflows and how long it takes you to accomplish certain tasks, And then you are provided with a vendor. You're asking who it is. You're communicating about that, and you're understanding their system. You then can identify, is there going to be is this going to be redundant? Do we have SOPs that say that we have to enter all this information in our site owned tech? And now we are going to be required to put it into a sponsor owned tech as well. So understanding The timelines that it takes, how much effort is needed will allow you to calculate more accurately what needs to be budgeted for. So I think that one of the pitfalls is underestimating that time and effort that's needed to implement and maintain any clinical trial solution.
Jimmy Bechtel:More great points there, Kristen. I think making sure that part of that process that you're doing when you're learning about those vendors and acquiring that information, as you had mentioned before, is then the resourcing part of it. I couldn't agree more getting the information so that you can accurately resource. And it's, it's probably not going to be perfect the first time. I think it's important for us to make sure that sites understand that you're going to stumble. This is new to everybody. And even our sponsors and CRO partners and to some extent the technology suppliers as well don't always have as accurate a picture as they can when it comes to resourcing. So give yourself some grace, give yourself some patience, and don't work against an extremely tight timeline if you're able to, especially here in the beginning as we're still working through some of the, we'll call them kinks, with technology. So give yourself that time to do your resourcing and your allocation properly.
Kristin Surdam:Absolutely. And the more we do this, the easier it will become, the more accurate our numbers will get. Right. So it may be a little bumpy in the beginning when you're just starting to collect data but it will get better.
Jimmy Bechtel:That's great. Great point. Thank you. Thank you, Kristen. What strategies or best practices then can sites adopt to optimize those budgets and ensure they're allocating resources efficiently? I guess kind of working Up here to culminate some of our answers from the last two questions.
Kristin Surdam:Yeah, I think I know I've mentioned it already, but I think that the best strategy that any site can take on is really identifying those areas that are going to require duplicative work. And even if you are implementing site owned technology, there is still an opportunity there to pass some of those costs on to your sponsor or CRO. As I mentioned, using data to estimate the number of hours, maybe it's per week, maybe it's per month, that this is going to add to your team because you're having to do the same task in multiple systems communicating that to your sponsor and if you're going to add it as a line item in your study budget you can justify that as long as you have that data to estimate those numbers of hours per week or per month you also can increase the cost of your personnel line items. In order to cover that time as well, if you don't want it as a separate line item. But with, even with site owned technology, it's not uncommon to add that in as well and pass some of those costs on to the sponsor. You just have to be prepared to defend your use of the system and be able to communicate the time savings and other benefits that the sponsor will realize based on your own site owned technology.
Jimmy Bechtel:Those are great solutions, Kristen. I think that sites often do attempt to get some of those costs covered. Maybe they don't. And I think that concept of your own technology costs or the use of that technology or even part of that being included in overhead or however you want to spin it. I think it's important that we. Do understand as an industry that these are true and real costs for sites sites. Your responsibility is setting up the appropriate justification. As you had mentioned, Kristen, being able to back that up with evidence as to why that cost should be reimbursed. Otherwise, it's never going to be reimbursed. And that we, as a collective, you Share that information. I think it's important as well for sites to share with each other that this is something I was reimbursed for. And this is how I was able to do that. We don't have to talk dollars because that's going to vary considerably across the site enterprise. But just by the pure fact that that was something that's sites have seen be reimbursed, I think is the true power of organizations and organizations. Thank you. Organizations like SCRS and the partnerships that we have with some of our global impact partners and exhibitors and sponsors like Florence. So that's a, that's a great point. Thank you for bringing that up.
Kristin Surdam:Yeah, I agree with that 100%. We don't need to talk numbers as, as you stated, that can vary geographic location. There are so many different factors that go into that, but just sharing what has been able to be reimbursed, how that was accomplished I think can really help all of us to make a change.
Jimmy Bechtel:That's great, Kristen. I think it's a great place for us to start to conclude our conversation here. So as we do that, are there any other major takeaways or lessons or points you want to re emphasize from the summit that you would like to share with the sites or even our industry partners that might be listening?
Kristin Surdam:Yeah, I think one thing that that has come up that I didn't mention is making sure when you're communicating with your sponsors or CROs that you're asking Is this system mandated for this study? You know, there's certain technology that absolutely is going to be mandated. Things like EPRO, ECOA, EDCs, right? We all know that those are going to come with a study. But if, if your sponsor or CRO is pushing down e regulatory or an ISP, Something of that nature where your site may already have that talk to them about whether it's required that you use their system and do that duplicative work versus can we use ours? Can I give you access if that's available? Available so that your sponsor zero can maintain that line of sight into study operations as well. So I think there's there's room for conversations there as well.
Jimmy Bechtel:Excellent point. Kristen and a great point for us to end on a lot of really good information here. Good. Key takeaways and good lessons for our sites to bring back to their organizations. I'm hoping that both sites and sponsors and CROs are taking notes because you shared some, some great insights again, Kristen. So thank you for being here with us. Thank you for sharing your expertise and your thoughts at both the SCRS West Conference, as well as our conversation today. Again, thank you for being here with us.
Kristin Surdam:Thank you for having me today, Jimmy. I will say that was a great inaugural conference. Really looking forward to next year. And I think that we are seeing some changes coming. Even having conferences like this technology focused one is to bring everyone together for a common goal. It's very exciting. So thank you to SCRS.
Jimmy Bechtel:Couldn't agree more. I'm looking forward to next year as well. For everyone listening, make sure that you register for upcoming summits like the SCRS West Conference that will be held next early summer throughout the year as well by visiting our summit page on our website, myscrs. org. While you're on our website, be sure to also check out the other SCRS publications that we've made for our community in the publications section of that same website, myscrs. org. We appreciate everyone's participation and listening to today's program and looking forward to having you join us for more great content coming out soon. Thanks again for listening.