Clinical research delays are something that can plague any clinical trial. From insufficient patient enrollment to regulatory compliance issues, many things can delay the progression of a clinical trial.
However, proper planning and organization can minimize or avoid these delays altogether. Here are seven tips for avoiding clinical research delays:
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Start early.
In clinical research, there are no second chances to get things right the first time. This can be especially true regarding vaccine trials. If you don’t have an immunogenicity assay before your trial starts, you may not realize that your study is useless until it’s too late.
Instead, you’ll have spent millions of dollars and precious time only to end up with a null result—and a lot of explaining.
Invest in good data collection processes.
When you’re working on clinical research, you need to be able to collect data from participants in a way that is efficient and accurate. That means the right kind of data collection tools are essential. You should also have a quality assurance process so that the scientific community and regulatory agencies can trust your results.
Directly delivered into the trial repository
The last step in a successful clinical trial is getting your data from the lab into the database and then out to your sponsor’s analytics platform. Some sites will have an upload tool that lets you directly deliver your files into the trial repository. If not, be sure to get all of your staff trained on how to use this process.
Implement consistency
Clinical trials are a great way to ensure that your product is safe and effective, but they can be a massive headache if you don’t plan. However, to avoid delays, it’s essential to ensure everyone who helps run the trial is on the same page and following protocol consistently.
Track your progress with a timeline.
To avoid delays and ensure that you have ample time to assess any issues, track the timeline of your trial from beginning to end. This will help you identify areas where changes are needed and potential bottlenecks before they become critical problems.
Minimize manual data entry
In a perfect world, all clinical research protocols would be designed with the EDC system. Unfortunately, this is not how things often work out in practice. Professionals at Medable suggest data entry errors are one of the most common causes of delays and preventable clinical research delays. To reduce this risk, you should use an electronic data capture (EDC) system to collect your clinical data as soon as possible.
Integrate with downstream systems
Integrating your clinical research with downstream systems can help minimize delays and improve data quality. For example, suppose you conduct a vaccine clinical trial. Integrating your clinical trial software with a data management system will allow seamless patient information transfer to other end-users such as regulatory authorities or medical journal publishers. This ensures that you can meet all deadlines without any hassle.
With the right approach, you can avoid clinical trial delays. And the key lies in the preparation. Follow these steps, and you can minimize the risk of encountering delays and get your trial underway as quickly as possible.
