By Brittany Wade 

July 12, 2022 | There are well-known and long-standing inefficiencies regarding securing business partners in the clinical trial space. With the landscape constantly shifting as stakeholders change roles, new molecules are developed, and key players expand therapeutic reach, it can be challenging to keep track of a prospective partner's industry standing or their potential contributions to a trial. For well over a decade, the industry has yearned for a collaborative space that makes it easy to form partnerships. Yet, ClinEco–a clinical trial ecosystem and market network that streamlines the process of identifying and selecting clinical trial partners–is the first of its kind. 

Given the significant challenges plaguing such processes, it is difficult to imagine why a similar platform did not already exist. ClinEco co-founders Dr. Marina Filshtinsky, SVP of Strategy and Product Development, and Micah Lieberman, VP of Community and Business Development, sparked the idea after successfully leading Cambridge Healthtech Institute’s (CHI) Summit for Clinical Ops Executes (SCOPE) and developing relationships with clinical research stakeholders for over fourteen years.  

“Being in the middle of that ecosystem, we realized that there’s a community of clinical trial innovators,” Lieberman tells Deborah Borfitz, Clinical Research News senior writer and host of the Scope of Things podcast. “SCOPE, through the loyalty of the speakers, sponsors, and attendees, has become a gathering place. Marina and I were well-positioned to help these stakeholders know each other, meet each other, and improve their decision-making on the identification and selection of partners.” As a result, ClinEco launched as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cambridge Innovative Institute (CII)–the parent company of CHI, Clinical Research News, and SCOPE. 

ClinEco’s founders exemplify what happens when a capable and responsive team positions itself at precisely the right place and time. “With COVID happening, the pandemic accelerated both the adoption and interest in new technologies, as well as new ways to run the trials,” says Filshtinsky. “We are talking about decentralizing hybrid trials, and with all these transformations, the vendor base is changing and exchanging rapidly. There are no innovative, easy ways to find new partners. We realized that although this is a vibrant community, a formalized marketplace didn’t exist to date.”    

With such swift changes, the founders agree that navigating an immense marketplace is complicated and nearly impossible without proper assistance. Thankfully, the ClinEco platform does more than just connect sponsors and vendors; it provides a dynamic space that shifts with the current landscape, allowing stakeholders to build and execute a clinical trial with access to the most current and accurate information. 

The idea of a marketplace is not novel. The general public uses similar frameworks to refinance homes or buy cars. Even massive industries like oil and gas take advantage of network systems. Still, the ClinEco team expanded the marketplace structure to develop a rich clinical trial market network in a multi-disciplinary space. “Trials are unique. They sit at the intersection of science, healthcare, technology, business, and people,” explains Lieberman. “Ultimately, you have individuals making decisions. Navigating the entire clinical research ecosystem can be overwhelming, even for experts. You’re always needing new resources, and there’s always change.” 

A Feature-Rich Platform 

At its core, ClinEco caters to the specific needs of individual sponsors and vendors. Sponsors such as big pharma, biotech, and device companies looking to buy a clinical trial service are asked to follow an efficient three-step process: discover and compare, engage and select, and exchange and finalize.  

The platform’s discovery tools include advanced, structured, and targeted filters that narrow vendors by therapeutic area, solutions category, and other detailed qualifiers. Additionally, the robust search engine and expertly designed user interface make comparing vendors and their corresponding services intuitive and efficient.  

Engagement capabilities include direct messaging with individualized company and employee inboxes and the option to use customizable templates and forms for streamlined communication. Users can take advantage of a watch list–or wish list of desired partners–to keep track of growing relationships. With in-app messaging, sponsors and vendors can avoid unnecessary marketing and sales processes and move directly into sharing the most pertinent information regarding a prospective trial.  

The selection process ensures sponsors choose potential partners through secure and centralized sharing from a document repository. A dashboard lets users send proposal requests, perform qualification assessments, finalize the purchase process, and access a complete communication history. 

Vendors like contract research organizations and small eClinical companies would follow a similar process. First, detail-rich company profiles highlight services, therapeutic reach, white papers, leadership, and contact information. Second, direct messaging facilitates open communication, and vendors can respond directly to sponsors when they post a specific need on the community wall. Third, formal document exchange finalizes mutual agreements. 

Companies can choose which features best optimize their workflow and shift to offline communication anytime. However, most vendors and sponsors will benefit by remaining on the platform. “We hope that a lot of those steps stay inside the platform so that your colleagues see that history and institutional knowledge and can share key learnings. It becomes richer over time; it becomes more valuable over time,” says Lieberman. 

A Streamlined Approach 

ClinEco aims to reduce costs and increase study speeds by eliminating familiar challenges. “Identifying, validating, and contacting vendors and partners for clinical trials is a well-known bottleneck. The process is time-consuming, labor-intensive, inefficient, and expensive,” explains Filshtinsky. 

She points to a Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development study (Impact Report), which found that drug sponsors typically spend four to six months moving from a request-for-information to a signed contract. By streamlining the process of securing partners and consolidating tasks, ClinEco truncates this period, saving time and money. 

Backed by a dedicated team of engineers and advisors, as well as the support of CII, the platform is quickly moving to its beta stage of development with plans to launch by early September of this year. Initially, joining the platform will be free. Later, the team will employ a subscription-based model with different price points and a sliding scale according to each company’s market capitalization. 

As development progresses, the team hopes to roll out unique features for advanced users, including concierge-level services and certification and training opportunities in collaboration with Barnett International. The team’s analytics-based approach will keep the platform relevant and responsive to the industry’s growing demands.