Moving from Different Levels of Comfort can Skew Your Perception of Things

I’ve been staying on in Barcelona for a few days after the excellent SCOPE Summit Europe, and I’ve noticed an interesting thing within myself, having moved from a nice hotel to a holiday apartment.

The apartment itself is fine, with a roof terrace and a small kitchen area – the kind of place I generally have no problem staying in.

The difference, I think, though, is that having stayed in a hotel where everything is finished to a high specification, moving on to an apartment that probably isn’t quite so well appointed has led to my feeling negative toward it. And even blaming it for the fact I got too hot while walking around to familiarize myself with the area.

Which makes me realize that perceptions of the environment we live in can be altered through levels of comfort – so perhaps comparing things against a lower baseline is a fairer way to make a realistic assessment.

Customer Exprerience Shouldn’t be Confined to Staying in a Nice Hotel

At the hotel I stayed in recently, there’s a rooftop bar on the seventh floor. At one point on the final day of my visit, the main lift (that’s elevator for those in the US) developed a fault such that it would simply close its doors then reopen them, without having moved, whenever anyone tried to use it to get to another floor.

I hailed a waiter to explain what was happening, and once he’d realised the lift was not working correctly, he took myself and a few others round to another part of the building to use the staff lift. Not only pointing it out to us, but taking us to our respective destinations, then going directly to reception to report the fault.

A perfect example of the kind of customer service you might expect in a nice hotel, but also that we should be able to experience in all walks of life – including clinical trial participation.

There are some Great Industry Initiatives Aiming to Make Clinical Trials Better

At the recent SCOPE Summit Europe in Barcelona – an excellent event with really good sessions and some great people in attendance – I was once again pleased to hear so many of the speakers talk about the good things that are happening in the industry.

I’ve mentioned before how it would be easy to come away from this type of conference thinking everything is right with clinical trials and the way they operate, then become disillusioned by observing what actually happens ‘on the ground’.

But actually I do think there is a sufficient groundswell of opinion for change – not just for its own sake, but change for the better.

Seeing examples of many of the initiatives that organizations within the industry are undertaking – including those from pharma, research sites, academic institutions, solutions providers etc. – left me with a sense that we are heading in the right direction.

Some Thoughts on the Kickoff Meeting for the Rare Disease Research Network

Last week I attended the kickoff meeting for the Rare Disease Research Network in Cambridge. Its purpose being to develop a strategy for designing and developing the network over the coming months.

Following a lot of discussion around functionality and the sort of features to include, we eventually came to a conclusion that scope creep could be a bit of a roadblock, so we might be best served by having a tight focus in the first instance while we develop the proof of concept.

Many of the people attending the meeting had inspiring stories about their own experience with rare conditions, including some who are caregivers to family members, or who work in organizations that provide support to the rare disease community.

The whole event was very energizing and once again helped underline for my why it is I’m pleased to work in this industry and hopefully be able to make a real difference to people’s lives.

The ClinOps Outsourcing Accelerator Giveaway from ClinOpsClarity and ClinEco

At the SCOPE Europe Summit here in Barcelona, myself and a colleague, Jason Gubb – in our guise as ClinOpsClarity – have partnered with ClinEco in a prize giveaway for one lucky biotech or pharma company to benefit from the ClinOpsClarity framework which accelerates the clinical trial outsourcing process.

The partnership with ClinEco provides access to the widest possible range of potential solution providers who we’ll contact for RFI and RFP analysis on behalf of the winning organization.

The process involves helping clients navigate the scoping, selection, and onboarding of oursourcing partners, and comes in at a value of $25,000. So it really is a valuable prize for one lucky winner, who will gain a clear understanding of which solutions are the perfect fit for their trial.

You can find more details, and enter the giveaway, at clinicalresearch.clineco.io/clin-ops-accelerator

Sometimes Tech Vendors in Clinical Research Develop Solutions in Search of a Problem

There are a lot of tech solutions on offer designed to make the process of patient recruitment and retention more effective.

With my original background in digital marketing, I’ve often been categorized as being among the tech solution fraternity myself – though even way back then I always stressed that the most important part of the phrase was the word ‘marketing’, not the word ‘digital’.

And it’s the same today. The digital and tech solutions on offer are effectively tools that can be utilized for things like making processes more efficient, or more accurately recording and analyzing data.

But without the human element, the tech side of things is simply another shiny object that may or may not be all that useful in the real world.

For instance, I’m approached quite frequently by tech-first people who’ve developed something that I consider to be a solution in search of a problem.

Putting patients – people – first, will always remain essential.

I’m Attending the SCOPE Europe Summit in Barcelona – Always a Good Event

Today I’ll be in Barcelona, ready to attend the SCOPE Europe summit on Tuesday and Wednesday, which is the sister event to the SCOPE Summit that takes place each year in Florida.

I’m looking forward to chatting with people I know in the industry, as well as making new connections and spending time among like-minded people who want to see the world or clinical research move on from its many problems and issues.

Many people – especially if they’re involved in a sales function – come to these conferences to push their own products and services. Which is understandable and obviously an element of what to expect when attending.

For myself, though, as well as the valuable networking and human interaction, I go to learn about the solutions on offer and the experiences people have had working in clinical trials.

There’s a great range of sessions lined-up, with lots of interesting topics, so I’m anticipating learning a great deal.

Changing the Location for Writing Helped me Write My Book More Quickly

When I was writing my book – The Patient Recruitment Conundrum – I experimented with different approaches to the act of writing, including varying the location.

Anyone who’s looked into this will have seen advice about creating a space you use specifically for writing, where you won’t be disturbed or interrupted and can concentrate on the job at hand.

For me, I started off mostly writing at the same desk and on the same computer that I use for work activities. And, indeed, I did find myself being distracted by emails, or spending time on urgent research related to where I might go on vacation in a few years.

I did manage to progress on that basis, and got quite a lot done, but not especially quickly. What I found worked best for speed and quantity was taking myself away from my normal environment, where I could dedicate more time and have more focus.

I can Now Get Hundreds of Notepads Worth of Content on One reMarkable Writing Tablet

I’ve previously talked about how I often take a lot of notes, and how writing things down has been very helpful for me to work through problems and come up with ideas.

In the past I used the traditional notepad and pen, and must have over a hundred of them going back through my career.

I went through a phase of using hard-backed A4 size pads, then settled for many years on a particular hard-backed A5 size pad.

More recently, I’ve been using the reMarkable writing tablet (https://remarkable.com/) – which is designed to mimic the feel of writing on paper and allows for the storage and indexing of many thousands of pages of writing and sketching, both in its own memory and in the cloud. The main advantage I find is being able to access all my previous notes in the same place, without having to remember which pad they were originally written in.

Developing the Rare Disease Research Network for more Patient-Centered Research Opportunities

Today I’m delighted to be involved with the Cambridge Rare Disease Network participating in a working group meeting to help develop their Rare Disease Research Network – which is building an ecosystem of partnerships and resources to facilitate new patient-centered research opportunities.

Recruiting patients for rare disease trials obviously comes with its own difficulties – not least of which the fact the potential patient population is going to be smaller than for more common diseases and conditions.

Certainly rare disease patients are active on social media and other websites, so a digital outreach approach is definitely one of the methods that can be used successfully.

And what I’m hoping will be developed with this new network is a more comprehensive set of tools that can be utilized for effective recruitment and retention of patients into trials for rare diseases. With the overall goal of fostering true collaboration between patients, sponsors, and other trial stakeholders to deliver better results for everyone.