By Allison Proffitt 

 

February 10, 2014 | Last week’s Summit for Clinical Ops Executives (SCOPE) in Miami, Fla., was a packed three days of conversations, networking, new products, and brainstorming on the future and direction of clinical trials.

 

We’ll be digging into the event more fully this week, but here is an overview.

 

Tuesday set the stage for a great event with a patient-focused plenary keynote session. Jamie Heywood, co-founder and chairman of PatientsLikeMe, delivered one of his always-inspiring challenges: to look closely at how we measure our progress in research and be sure patients are included. 

 

Christine Pierre, President of the Society for Clinical Research Sites (SCRS) invited four patients on stage to discuss their experiences and concerns with the trial process. It was a powerful session, closed with a standing ovation by the audience.

 

With the audience appropriately inspired, it was off to the exhibit hall and then sessions. This year SCOPE hosted 11 tracks over the three days covering everything from electronic data in clinical trials; site selection and feasibility assessment; spending and reporting; post-marketing; patient recruitment, retention, and engagement; and much more.

 

A few bloggers and speakers posted about the event and their sessions. Here’s a quick roundup:

 

T.J. Sharpe, one of the patients in Tuesday’s keynote session, is blogging about his experience with melanoma for Philly.com, and he wrote about the session from the onstage perspective

 

Nadia Bracken kept a running update on the ClinOps Toolkit blog. She summarized Day One, Day Two in two parts, and Day Three.

 

Jeri Burtchell, Co-Founder of Partners In Research, was introduced as the “Godmother of social media in clinical trials,” before her presentation with Joe Kim of Shire and Ken Getz of Tufts CSDD. Jeri blogged about her speech and included Joe’s presentation on the Partners in Research blog. 

 

Clinical Informatics News was thrilled to present our first Best Practices Awards in the clinical space during the Thursday keynote session. Honors were awarded to Clinical Ink, Forte Research Systems, and Mytrus and Pfizer.

 

The closing keynote on Thursday featured Craig Lipset of Pfizer, Jackie Kent of Eli Lilly and representing TransCelerate, and Andrew Lee of Sanofi, all challenging the community to work together and use what they’ve learned. The data is the lowest common denominator, Lipset said. When you learn about best practices, adopt them! When you have pre-competitive conversations, share the resulting information. 

 

“I’m not interested in running another pilot project,” Lipset said. “I’m not in the airline business.”