Moving Toward a Collaborative Clinical Ecosystem
As a follow up to the launch of Veeva SiteVault earlier this year, Veeva announced Veeva Site Connect as the next step in helping sponsors and sites work together and accelerate study execution. Veeva Site Connect is Veeva’s latest innovation that seamlessly connects sponsor and site operations. We sat down with Jason Methia, VP of Strategy Veeva Site Connect, to discuss some of the ways in which these two solutions are helping the life sciences industry.
Empowering Clinical Research Sites is the First Step
Methia describes the benefits that sites have to gain with SiteVault. “First of all, SiteVault is FREE. Second, it does more for sites than the typical software that sponsors offer to them. SiteVault supports a site’s day-to-day operations in the eISF or eRegulatory space. Over time, it will continue to deliver more and more functionality that helps clinical research sites execute and run their operations.”
Elaborating on the challenges that have existed in achieving better collaboration, Methia continues, “The challenge is two-fold: First, the tools sites have had access to haven’t focused on improving operations (speed) or patient experiences. The technology has mostly been transactional. Veeva SiteVault helps improve operational efficiencies at clinical sites. It gives sites access to high quality technology free of charge that helps them improve the quality of their operations. Second, even if all parties (sites, sponsors, patients) are capturing information electronically, there is still a tremendous amount of manual effort and duplication in the collaboration process. This manual effort adds to the administrative burden of clinical trials. While it can’t all be fully automated, high volume transactional activities associated with information sharing can and should be automated. This is what Veeva Site Connect addresses.”
Reducing High-Volume, Low-Value Tasks is Key to Efficiency
Veeva Site Connect has the potential to transform how sponsors and sites collaborate. “Veeva Site Connect makes it simpler for sponsors to get information from research sites that use SiteVault. SiteVault and Veeva Site Connect together can improve communication and drive better efficiency in how they execute clinical trials.”
Methia goes on to describe how this is accomplished. “The focus of Veeva Site Connect is to connect sponsors and clinical research sites through the Veeva Clinical Network. Our vision is to automate the flow of shared clinical trial information between clinical research sites and sponsors throughout the course of a trial, and over time, do the same for patient-related information. We want to streamline the transactional activities associated with any business process where there’s a high volume of documentation exchanged between a clinical research site and a sponsor. This could include clinical study documents, safety information, patient recruitment information, etc. Our hope is that an environment where information is shared seamlessly, with little to no effort but in a controlled manner, will make a big difference in how clinical trials are executed.”
This efficiency grows exponentially when considering how the solution will scale over time. “Veeva Site Connect will provide real interoperability across sponsors and (potentially) tens of thousands of clinical research sites over time as sponsors and sites adopt this. There are no portals. There are no complex integrations. This is all handled by Veeva as part of our service. All of the sharing and communication happens in an automated fashion.” By providing this capability, both sites and sponsors can simplify their technology footprint significantly, saving time and money across the board.
How would sponsors benefit specifically? “What this offers to sponsor organizations is that level of connectivity in a much simpler way. I think we’re going to see an indirect benefit at the sponsor level around increasing site engagement and enabling a mentality of sponsor-of-choice. We’re taking a different approach as it pertains to sponsor-provided technology.”
Interested in learning more? Watch the webinar: An Industry Perspective on Information Sharing and Collaboration.