Global Clinical Outsourcing Forum – Avoids Death by PowerPoint with New Format – Round Up
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GCOF took brave step this year and was un-conferenced.
The 3rd Annual Global Clinical Outsourcing Forum, took place in Amsterdam from the 24th-25th April 2012. As a result of feedback from last year’s attendees, the IQPC event team changed the format to create an event that provided a completely interactive, discussion based forum. Senior Conference Director Nicola Ambler said at the event: ”There is only one rule…no death by PowerPoint!”
Attendees were given the chance to step away from the repetition of two days of presentations and given a real opportunity to share knowledge and information and swap strategies and ideas with the rest of the community through a host of interactive sessions, which included Drop in clinics, Crisis management and Quick-fire rounds.
The outstanding speaker panel consisting of over 20 industry experts included Diane Chisholm Head of Clinical Operations at Santhera Pharmaceuticals, Carlos Camozzi, CMO Amsterdam Molecular Therapeutics, Julian Howell Head of Clinical Development, ProStrakan, Larry Blankstein, Senior Clinical Research Director, Genzyme.
The first day opened with a keynote case-study from Linda Sullivan, VP Operations, Metrics Champion Consortium, on MCC Standardized Performance Metrics and Quality Scoring Tools: An Industry-wide Collaborative Effort to Develop and Implement Standardised Clinical Trial Performance Metrics to Enhance Sponsor and Clinical Outsourcing Collaborations. In which participants had the opportunity to learn how a group of pharmaceutical, biotechnology, CRO and core labs are collaborating to define and implement standardised performance metrics and quality scoring tools with the intent to drive performance improvement of the drug development process.
Other highlights on Day One included an open discussion on the effect of mergers and acquisitions in the pharma and CRO landscape, and a quick fire round to assess the benefits and address the concerns of running clinical trials in different regions.
At this year’s event, Pharma IQ also launched its BLUE SKY INNOVATION BOARDROOM to tackle challenges unique to the most senior executives. As a prerequisite all participants had to have 5+ years delivery experience, plus at least one of the following criteria budgetary responsibility, decision making power with regards to vendors, input into outsourcing and partnership strategy.
As no press were allowed I can’t tell anything more about the Boardroom but Day Two continued to be just as stimulating and started with a great debate. The debate looked at establishing partnership accountability and transparency and the big question was - Who is accountable for over runs and the true cost association of delaying time to market?
This interactive session brought together both sides of the relationship to iron out how to establish accountability and how this can be set out in the initial contract. Just some of the points raised were:
- Lack of staff at the CRO
- CRO staff turnover
- Unrealistic assumptions (timeline and resources)
- Low bid budget CROs
- Unclear roles and responsibilities
- Site overestimation
- Lack of resources during holiday periods
- Lack of intelligence (local and competitor)
- Protocol quality
- Takeovers
- Training time
- Lack of communication
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But the debate ended on a positive note with CRO and sponsor coming together to define 6 tactics for avoiding over runs:
- Careful planning
- Risk Assessment
- Establishing the known vs. the un known
- Reasonable timelines
- Get local input
- Focus on a global solution
Now I am not by any means suggesting that we get rid of presentation slide, but by introducing just a few of these innovative formats to an event kept everyone engaged and adds value for all participants.
Don’t forget to come armed with your questions to the next one!
www.globalclinicaloutsourcing.com
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