By Deborah Borfitz 

May 31, 2022 | Time and again when starting a study, clinical trial practitioners from sponsoring companies build all the necessary relationships and book of capabilities from scratch—perhaps with a Google search and calls to old colleagues for some firsthand intel. Whatever gets dug up tends to stay within the confines of a therapeutic department, if not a cubicle, where the knowledge exists or dies, according to Micah Lieberman, co-founder and vice president of community and business development for ClinEco. 

Editor’s Note: ClinEco is a spin out of Cambridge Healthtech Institute (CHI), the same parent company as Clinical Research News. The team responsible for ClinEco is also the team behind the Summit for Clinical Ops Executives (SCOPE).  

As the world’s first clinical trial ecosystem and marketplace, ClinEco is designed to address this challenge, Lieberman says. It connects study sponsors in need of clinical trial support with the full range of clinical trial technology and service providers. “With ClinEco, clinical trial practitioners can comprehensively discover, compare, engage, exchange, and ultimately select new providers, accelerating fit-for-purpose and flexible clinical trial research partnerships with high-value providers and partners.” 

ClinEco will also be a win on the supply side, notes Marina Filshtinsky, M.D., co-founder and senior vice president of strategy and product development. Rather than inefficiently attempting to engage with sponsors who may not be ready to consider new solutions, it resets the dynamic whereby sponsors can effectively communicate precisely when they need a service or technology. 

This new dynamic creates a passive inbound lead generation stream benefitting contract research organizations (CROs) and technology service providers, she says. ClinEco’s rich spotlight capabilities also give suppliers the power to go far beyond a static web page and stand out in the connected community via an enriched profile populated with a few required basics (e.g., age, size, and financial stability) as well as a long list of optional extras (e.g., video clips, awards, and white papers). 

Two-way communication between clinical trial service buyers and suppliers can be initiated in multiple ways, including clicking a link on a supplier’s profile and following contact-us instructions provided on a “looking for” form where companies broadcast their needs to the broader supplier community, Filshtinsky says. From company-specific webpages, sponsors and vendors will also be able to chat privately with one another. 

The B2B platform will offer all kinds of professionally developed, research-relevant templates, including pre-created documents for RFIs (requests for information), RFPs (requests for proposals), and NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) that smaller sponsor companies may not have available in-house, adds Lieberman. ClinEco will serve as a vehicle for document exchange, as well as simplify the process of onboarding new partners. 

ClinEco was an idea born out of Lieberman and Filshtinsky’s experience running CHI’s SCOPE event, which has been fostering collaboration and innovation for well over a decade now. After countless conversations with those running clinical trials, the pair found themselves in a unique position to build a web-based digital community that could deliver on attendees’ desire to stay connected to one another on a 24/7 basis. 

 The community wanted both a marketplace for transactions with pre-screened companies as well as an online meeting space where they could learn, share, and build deep and lasting relationships, says Lieberman. ClinEco is expected to launch in June 2022 with a narrow group of beta testers before gradually scaling to embrace the larger universe of clinical trial sponsors, study sites, patient advocacy groups, CROs, technology companies, nonprofit organizations, and regulators. 

Inflection Point 

The concept of a clinical trials marketplace was seeded during the first few months of the pandemic when clinical trials were abruptly interrupted, and pharma companies were forced to switch to novel approaches, notably decentralized and hybrid trial designs, says Filshtinsky. Record-breaking speed in starting and completing COVID-related studies also became a requirement. 

All the new challenges put the clinical trials industry in “transformation mode,” introducing new vendors to the field—ranging from telemedicine providers to visiting nurse agencies and remote health monitoring companies—and the infusion of real-world data blurring the lines between healthcare and clinical research. “We were directly told the entire field is missing a dedicated functional marketplace,” says Filshtinsky, “and we got the super ambitious idea that we could help.” 

The process of finding a good partner was never easy or quick, but the urgency to do something about it had finally reached an inflection point, she notes. Sponsors now know it is possible to jumpstart a study and want to do it beyond the pandemic. 

The people wrestling with the new normal—most especially clinical operations and innovation managers and therapeutic area leads—tend to have a lot of trials in the pipeline and may be “competing for resources, against themselves, internally and externally,” adds Lieberman. A new crop of smaller vendors, meanwhile, are having trouble getting their outreach to match the times when their services are needed by study sponsors and CROs.  

A biotech company may be actively seeking patient recruitment services or an electronic clinical outcome assessment solution and not even be aware that a colleague a few cubicles down could make a referral or recommendation, he says. “These people want to find each other, but... the timing is not aligned, and our marketplace enables that.”  

ClinEco will be a natural fit with the everyday life of consumers already doing many complicated transactions online, including refinancing their house and purchasing a car, Lieberman says. But finding and evaluating a contractor to support research on humans has many unique complexities that necessitate a slow and careful build of the platform. 

Social Networking 

Unlike a typical, two-sided marketplace, ClinEco will be an ecosystem for all clinical trial stakeholders, says Filshtinsky. “Everyone can have their space on this platform.” 

ClinEco is a business-to-business network that operates much like a social media channel like Facebook and LinkedIn, she continues. Clinical trial sponsors are the main actors and will be offered real estate on the platform housing their own member dashboard, partner “watch list,” and inbox linking to their internal knowledgebase of third-party vendors—including, potentially, a running average on their performance. 

One of the main features of the platform is the search engine designed specifically for clinical trials, says Filshtinsky. The filters are targeted and well researched, making it easier for sponsor companies looking for a partner to find the right candidates for a side-by-wide comparison.  

Enabling easy comparisons will be valuable for small and large sponsors alike, interjects Lieberman. A small biotechnology company may have only two people handling procurement, clinical innovation, and vendor outsourcing and management. ClinEco’s rich discovery, comparison, and document exchange capabilities can help streamline those workflows. 

At larger companies such as BMS or Merck, ClinEco can help link together various therapeutic and specialty leaders to foster better cross-company communication about services and technologies of shared value. 

Messaging will happen externally via the “looking for” form as well as internally on the company-specific pages, he says. To prevent pharmaceutical and biotech companies from being overwhelmed with sales pitches, their inbox can be customized to funnel messages to the right people based on their role. When publicizing their vendor needs, they can also use a series of check boxes on the “looking for” form to ensure the announcement goes out only to would-be partners who would be a qualified match.  

Longer term, ClinEco aims to develop the knowledgebase of the entire community both by posting white papers and offering training for the next generation of professionals responsible for the safe and efficient operation of clinical trials. “For times when [sponsors] aren’t actively looking for a new vendor, we still want to offer them value inside of this ecosystem, to keep them engaged and help them get smarter,” says Lieberman. 

ClinEco also intends to publicly publish positive reviews of the supply-side companies “LinkedIn style,” Filshtinsky says, with the vendors having the final say-so on what gets posted. But the number of reviews may be limited, since some sponsors prohibit any type of rating or even identifying a partner by name. Separately, companies may opt to have their page feature an “average internal rating” on vendors based entirely on employees’ willingness to recommend the company to a colleague. 

Business Model 

Access to the ecosystem for CROs and technology service providers is by subscription, priced on a sliding scale based on the company’s annual revenue, Lieberman says. Those companies will also be able to advertise and post white papers on the platform for a fee. On the pharma side, ClinEco will offer individual subscriptions for users.  

ClinEco was founded with a diverse advisory board that provided guidance on its development and key features, he adds. Members hail from Cerevel Therapeutics, AbbVie, BMS, Novartis, ClinOne, Real Chemistry, and Pfizer. 

After beta testing is completed later this summer, the marketplace and ecosystem will open to the broader universe of clinical trial stakeholders, says Lieberman. Fee-based concierge services will be added in the future. Initially these will include clinical verification and matchmaking services, both of which will require human support.