Focusing on predictability and execution in digital trials

Recently attending the Veeva R&D and Quality Summit in Madrid, pharmaphorum web editor Nicole Raleigh sat down with Veeva’s president of Europe, Chris Moore.

The event seen as a chance to bring the whole industry together, Moore explained how there is an excitement in the industry currently, with more drugs being developed, more conditions being treated – including those not before addressed – and that Veeva is endeavouring to do what it can to help raise the industry capabilities. So it is that the Veeva R&D and Quality Summit has become a test bed to see whether the company is on the right track.

Focusing, broadly, on the state of clinical trials in both the UK and Europe – figures from the ABPI having shown a 41% decline in new trial initiations in the UK between 2017 and 2021, and the high level, macro view across those geographies lately focusing more on speciality diseases, industry seeking both predictability and diversity when it comes to finding patients – they discuss the knock-on effect of Brexit, the uncertainty it caused and not knowing what it would do to rules and regulations, noting also the understaffing of the NHS, and the unignorable impact of the pandemic, also.

The conversation flowing through the European Commission’s proposal to create a single market across the EU for medicines, as well as the more local implications of the UK Life Sciences Council’s recent meeting on the sector’s economic potential and how best to tackle recent decline in investment – Moore highlights the importance of action following through on intention, including clinical trial acceleration networks (CTANs) funded and equipped to deliver ‘genuinely best-in-world clinical trials services’. He discusses, also, the current fragmentation of parties as things stand, and why Veeva is working towards bettering internal connections in industry.

Veeva having developed a Digital Trials Platform, a connected technology ecosystem hoping to create a tangible transformation for industry, it would have been remiss of them to leave out broaching the subject of AI and ChatGPT, given the importance of good data management (one of Veeva’s fortes), as the clinical trials landscape continues to change in this age of automation and electronic data capture. Indeed, as Moore states, a positive attitude to digital is crucial going forward, with the incredible technologies that are here and are yet to come – and that includes Veeva’s own CRM Chatbot – but the key foci along that journey will necessarily be predictability and execution.

You can listen to episode 88a of the pharmaphorum podcast in the player below, download the episode to your computer, or find it – and subscribe to the rest of the series - in iTunes, Spotify, acast, Stitcher, and Podbean.