Making clinical trials work from home — Medically Necessary

What happens when researchers have to change up their methods?

Last year many drug researchers had to modify their clinical trials to include remote elements, like shipping drugs directly to patients and performing video check-ins. Now, pharmaceutical companies want to adopt some of those measures to make clinical trials more efficient. The challenge will be getting the supply chain to support these remote trials.

Matt Blois looks at some of those methodology changes and supply chain challenges on this episode of Medically Necessary. 

He welcomes Andrea Zobel, senior director of personalized supply chain for World Courier, to the show for a discussion about the logistics of decentralized clinical trials. Traditionally, clinical trials are based at a centralized research site, and patients have to travel to that site to get treatments and researchers have to go there to take measurements.  

Zobel talks about the growth in popularity of these trials and if they’re here to stay following the COVID-19 pandemic. 

You can find more Medically Necessary episodes and recaps for all our live podcasts here.

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Kaylee Nix

Kaylee Nix is a meteorologist and reporter for FreightWaves. She joined the company in November of 2020 after spending two years as a broadcast meteorologist for a local television channel in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Kaylee graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 2018 and immediately made the Tennessee Valley her home. Kaylee creates written summaries of FreightWaves live podcasts and cultivates the social media for FreightWaves TV.