By Allison Proffitt 

December 19, 2023 | The SCOPE team just announced the finalists in the inaugural Site Innovation Award, recognizing sites and partnerships pioneering new approaches to improve clinical trials. The winner will be announced at the Summit for Clinical Ops Executives in Orlando, February 11-14, 2024.  

SCOPE hosts a suite of awards highlighting excellence in the various parts of the clinical trial community. The Participant Engagement Award honors creativity in recruitment and retention. The Best of Show Award highlights the best new products in the space. This is the first year for the Site Innovation Award, highlighting excellence in the clinical operations community. 

“Clinical trial complexity has increased significantly over the past 5-10 years, creating greater challenges to research sites. As a result, the need for site centricity and reducing site burden has become increasingly important,” said Bridget Kotelly, Senior Conference Director, Cambridge Healthtech Institute, and one of the founders and judges for the new awards program. “Clinical operations teams can be complex, made up of sites, sponsors, CROs, and technology providers all working together. I’m thrilled to recognize these finalists who are leveraging new technologies, processes, and workflows to modernize clinical trials while addressing practical site needs.”   

The judges considered low-tech and high-tech solutions that effectively reduce site burden and improve a site’s ability to advance clinical research while providing patient-centered care. These could include improvements to site operational efficiency; study activation innovation; innovative data capture, transfer and integration; successes in staff training, support, retention, or inclusivity; and more.  

Submissions were reviewed by a panel of industry experts representing perspectives from various sides of the clinical operations ecosystem. Finalists will present their concepts in person at SCOPE. Submissions are rated for creativity in improving site success, reducing burden, and supporting digitalization of clinical trials. 

2024 Finalists 

CRIO and West Clinical Research 
Automated Medical Records Retrieval: Reduce Site Burden and Improve Patient Oversight

The current process to determine patient eligibility, understand past medical histories and concomitant medications is antiquated and lengthy.  This process often results in carrying out procedures and activities that may not be required depending on what is determined in the review of medical records.  With CRIO's integrated Medical Record API, West Clinical Research (WCR) has been able to gain access to medical records within minutes, integrate them with the CRIO eSource system and use these data to improve patient screening and oversight.   

Gilead Sciences 
Site Insights & Feasibility Intelligence (SiFi): an innovative approach to enhance site interactions and simplify site feasibility

Gilead has developed a customized process to revolutionize the conventional method of site feasibility by consolidating many components into one seamless process.  The system moves away from a largely transactional process and leverages site intelligence and relationships to expedite site selection. Reducing the amount of repetitive information an institution is required to enter (by centralizing institutional-level capabilities), Gilead projects an expedited feasibility process while better using site resources to create a site-centric approach to feasibility.  

Medidata Solutions, a Dassault Systems company 
Making Data Entry Easier and Faster for Sites with Medidata’s Companion

Medidata’s Companion reduces data (re-)entry efforts for clinical trial sites, increases data quality, and lowers monitoring costs by making it much simpler and faster to get source data from other electronic systems/documents (including EHR (electronic health record) systems) into Rave EDC. Companion eliminates the need for back-and-forth between windows and dramatically reduces the need for retyping data from another source into Rave EDC. Unlike EHR-to-EDC integration approaches that require point-to-point connections and complex mapping between systems, Companion is much simpler and faster to implement, making it very scalable, and it’s not limited to EHR data. 

Atlas Clinical Research
Revolutionizing Clinical Trial Activation: The Greenlight Process 

Atlas Clinical Research has developed an innovative 'Greenlight Process' that streamlines clinical trial activation. This method focuses on preemptive problem-solving, efficient coordination, and rapid regulatory compliance, aiming to eliminate delays and initiate trials promptly. Our Greenlight Process ensures that clinical trials are ready to launch on schedule, improving operational efficiency and expediting patient access to critical treatments. 

UCSD, ClinOne 
Seconds count during a stroke code - Clinical Trial Edition 

During a stroke code, minutes matter. ClinOne gives our team instant access to critical trial enrollment information, such as inclusion and exclusion criteria, clinical protocols, study drug administration, enrollment hotlines, and more, all documents which are key to our success in enrolling patients acutely into clinical trials. With a one-stop-shop to house all the most up-to-date clinical trial information, we can standardize our protocol process across studies and make it easy for clinicians to reference information to efficiently enroll new patients into research studies.