ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Florence Healthcare, the leading platform for electronic document and data workflow management and remote connectivity in clinical trials, released today its annual State of Clinical Trial Technology Industry Report. More than 230 clinical operations professionals across the drug development lifecycle participated in this year's report, revealing how they plan to invest in technology over the next three years.
"The data confirmed what we hear from the 8,000 study sites and hundreds of sponsors in over 30 countries on our network; COVID forced organizations to accelerate their technology transformation plans," said Blake Adams, VP Marketing at Florence. "For example, over two million remote monitoring events are executed on our platform every month, reflecting the fact that 76% of sponsors now primarily use remote access technology for monitoring study sites, compared to 18% last year."
Key findings from the survey conducted online in late November and early December include:
- 47% of sites and 36% of sponsors indicated they increased their 2020 technology budgets to reduce disruptions from COVID.
- 65% of sites intend to have an electronic investigator site file (eISF) in place by the end of 2020, and 47% expect to use eConsent.
- 90% of sites state that increasing their chances of being selected by a sponsor for a study is one of their primary reasons for investing in technology.
- 80% of sites and 83% of sponsors anticipate that most or all of their monitoring visits will be conducted remotely by 2023.
"The data indicate remote site access for eISF monitoring and data review is here to stay," explained Andrea Bastek, Ph.D., Director of Innovation for Florence. "Sites and sponsors pushed it forward to deal with restricted access during COVID, but now understand and have begun to measure the long-term benefits it can have on study timelines, inspection readiness and workloads."
The study exposed potential delays in study timelines and compliance risks associated with the lack of remote access to source documents and the resulting workarounds. Sixty-one percent of sponsors reported exchanging documents via email or non-purpose-built file-sharing systems. Florence is closing this gap through the continued enhancement of its remote access platform, Florence eHub, as demonstrated in its support of Pfizer’s global COVID-19 vaccine study.
"In keeping with our mission to advance research together, we are committed to being more than just another software vendor; we strive to be stakeholders in our customers' success," said Ryan Jones, CEO and Co-Founder of Florence. “This report, as well as input from our user groups and customer advisory boards, give us clear guidance on how to partner with them to make a long-term impact on clinical research.”
To download the full 2021 report, please click here. You may also listen to a panel of experts from Florence as they discuss the findings in this on-demand webinar.
POWERED BY FLORENCE
Based in Atlanta, Florence is the leading platform for remote connectivity and electronic document workflow management in clinical research and is considered the industry standard with more than 8,000 research sites in 30 countries, sponsors and CROs collaborating on its network. Florence advances clinical trials through software for managing document and data flow between research sites and sponsors. Florence solutions foster 25% faster start-up time and 40% reduced document cycle time, among other benefits. To learn about advancing research through collaboration, visit www.florencehc.com.
