Author: MRN
The clinical trial landscape is one fraught with challenges and hurdles,1 many of which are left to clinical trial sites to overcome by themselves while still being expected to meet trial deadlines and remain within budgetary limits. Further, while many of these issues are viewed as universal, a site’s ability to meet them is not. Size, location, funding, and staffing are all factors when it comes to a site’s ability to not only meet challenges, but to overcome them while still fulfilling study obligations and meeting deadlines and targets.
Just as sites have unique needs, so do different studies, and again there are multiple factors influencing the support required to successfully execute different trial protocols. To ensure that a site can conduct a trial, regardless of complexity, Sponsors and CROs need to conduct time-consuming, lengthy trial selections and feasibility studies. Due to this, they often forgo or reduce the amount of time spent on these steps by turning to those sites they have worked with in the past.
The result of returning to well-known and well-used sites can have unintended or unexpected negative consequences such as a lack of generalization in study results, slower than anticipated/no enrollment, and lack of resources to effectively and efficiently execute on a study. Past site success is not necessarily a predicter of future success. While a previous study protocol may well have been within a site’s capabilities in the past, there is no guarantee that it will be now – especially as clinical trial protocols are becoming increasingly complex.
Bring Solutions, Not Problems
Site Networks have been at the center of a seismic shift across the biotech and pharma industries. However, they are still veiled in misconceptions and misunderstandings, which means that both uptake in use of site networks and understanding of what different site networks can offer has been slow.
Yet the right site network can make all the difference in addressing the multitude of issues that both sites and studies are constantly facing into today’s evolving clinical landscape. Patient-first, community-focused site networks usually work with community-based and even trial-naïve sites – those that are entrenched in their communities but may be overlooked by Sponsors and CRO’s as there is an assumption that they will not have the clinical trial experience or resources to run their trials successfully.
However, these are the sites that have access to untapped patient populations – and have established trust with their patients, something which has been historically difficult to do. When part of a site network, sites then receive individualized support, with the network evaluating and collaborating with each site to determine the support required.
This support may come in the form of additional hands – staff and healthcare professionals (HCPs) that have clinical trial and research experience and will join the study team for part or the full duration of the study depending on what the site and trial protocol require. Further it may be that the site requires additional training – this may be trial protocol specific or more generalized; helping a trial-naïve site become trial-ready or helping sites get to grips with new technologies and platforms.
While additional support can go a long way in supporting sites, it may not always be enough. Sites will have physical restrictions that are hard to get around – capacity, restricted hours of operation, administrative limitations. There is a limit to how much a site can physically take on, even with the additional support.
Hybrid Solutions + Site Networks
A site network that has access to additional support for their sites through hybrid solutions is one that can offer truly individualized and fully flexible support. Decentralized clinical trial (DCTs) services, such as Home Trial Support (HTS), can significantly decrease workloads and pressures on sites. Site Principal Investigators (PIs) can determine which visits can be delegated to a decentralized team of HCPs.
HTS can also be a useful recruitment tool for sites, as it offers patients an alternative to visiting the site for each of the required visits – engaging with those patients who cannot get to the clinical site for every visit due to work/family commitments and/or location, transportation, or healthcare restrictions. Further, HTS can also provide sites with specialists in their field, which allows them to take on more complex trial protocols.2
The use of DCT solutions like HTS can free up valuable time for site-based staff. It not only provides the site team with more time to focus on patient enrollment and providing more personalized patient care, which is critical for patient retention, as well as more time to effectively manage trial administration tasks such as reporting and data cleaning.
Community and patient-centric site networks that have DCT capabilities are able to work with a variety of sites and enable them to participate in every type of study – which provides lifesaving, critical care to all patient populations, but especially those who are historically underserved and underrepresented in clinical trials. They do this by offering flexible, tailor-made solutions that can evolve and adapt to each individual site’s needs and unique study requirements.
Learn how MRN’s global Site Network is empowering sites to reach more patients and deliver a wider array of clinical trials in the community here.
References:
- WCG. 2024 Clinical Research Site Challenges Report. https://www.wcgclinical.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/WCG_2024_Clinical_Research_Site_Challenges_Report.pdf. Last accessed June 2025.
- Medical Research Network. Delivering Specialist Neurology Support: MRN’s Multinational Parkinson’s Disease Trial Expertise. https://themrn.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Neurology-Parkinsons-Disease-SPS-Case-Study.pdf. Last accessed June 2025.