In 1869, chemist Dimitri Mendeleev published a paper outlining a new way of explaining the elements found in chemistry; this table, built on all the work that had come before him, arranged the elements based on their atomic mass and their similarities. It paved the way for the periodic table we use around the world today. The elements in each column of Mendeleev’s periodic table have similar properties and so it becomes easier for scientists to understand their interactions and how molecules can deliver their specific properties. It was a work of spectacular genius.
AT MRN we have been trying for some time, to explain how Decentralized Clinical Trials work. Trying to explain how all the parts interact, the relationships and bonds that bind them together, and that what seems simple and easy is increasingly complex. We have been told multiple times, “Isn’t it just sending a nurse out to do a blood draw, why do you need to train them?”
1 year ago, it dawned on us that a clear and simple way to show all the DCT elements was to create the MRN periodic table. It has given us a clear way to help educate the industry about decentralized trials, not just that DCT exists and that we can facilitate a facetime call between a physician and patient, but what is involved in bringing physical, clinical research visits to patients, in their own communities around the World. When we deliver a clinical visit it’s not just sending a clinical research professional to a home, there are many elements that need to be managed so they work in harmony with each other.
The elements in each column of MRNs periodic table work in the same way as Mendeleev’s Periodic Table. On their own each element is powerful, but they really make a difference when they are combined to create bespoke ‘molecules’.
We work with our customers on their protocols, reviewing them with our in-house experts and creating these bespoke molecules to best meet the needs of the patients, sites and visits covered within that protocol. There is no one size fits all in clinical research, so having a stable of ‘elements’ that can be combined in the best ways possible to meet these varied needs, means we can support our customers with the most appropriate decentralized clinical trial programs wherever their sites and patients are around the world.
Over time Mendeleev’s periodic table has grown and developed with new elements discovered and added over the years; MRNs periodic table also continues to grow and develop, adding new elements as we develop new functionality and acquire new businesses to meet the ever-growing needs of clinical research. While we aren’t talking helium, plutonium, magnesium, and uranium, we are talking about our DCT elements that come together to build workable, sustainable, sophisticated, trial specific ‘molecules’.
So how timely is this? On World Periodic Table Day, we are at SCOPE 2023 in Florida, USA, running an educational session, highlighting to our industry peers the complexities of Decentralized Clinical Trials, the multiple needs of stakeholders and how they can find their ‘Ah-hah moment’, bringing our elements and the bespoke decentralized clinical molecules they create to successfully bear on their trials. If you are at SCOPE please come and see us live, if you haven’t been able to attend, please explore the rest of our website, or reach out via Marketing@Themrn.co.uk and arrange for one of our experts to talk with you about how the full range of DCT elements may be able to assist you.
Finally, “Thank you Dimitri”
Doug Cookson
Vice President Commercial Development