Clinical trials are expensive, time-sensitive, and closely monitored, with sponsors and contract research organisations (CROs) under pressure to run studies faster, collect higher quality data, and meet strict rules without increasing budgets. However, many trials still rely on a patchwork of separate systems that do not connect sufficiently.
This lack of interoperability has consequences when it comes to costs. Estimates from CRScube suggest that sponsors and CROs spend 45% more when using traditional, disconnected clinical trial technologies. These higher costs usually come from the three areas of technology spend, extra effort, and direct vendor costs. Understanding each area makes it easier to see where savings are possible.
Paying to integrate and aggregate complex data
Many trials use multiple isolated solutions for different jobs. Examples include using multiple solutions for collecting patient data, and another set of solutions for tracking trial progress, for storing trial documentation and trial risks management. When these tools don’t naturally work together, teams face fees to connect them and to keep them connected throughout a trial.
Even when separate tools are connected through integrations, it can be challenging to establish a clear view of what’s happening across the trial. Data may be siloed and require pulling together for updates, decision-making, or reporting. Some large pharmaceutical companies have even built big internal systems to bring everything into one place, as their external tools are unable to provide a single view of data during trials.
This kind of build-it-yourself approach is costly and adds more moving parts to maintain. When tools and systems do not work together smoothly, sponsors or CROS can end up paying extra for visibility across their own trial.
Discrepancies in clinical data and how to reconcile them
Disconnected tools increase the amount of work clinical research teams must do, with teams often needing to set up the same study details in several systems. Site users are often asked to enter the same information more than once, just because different tools require it. These repetitive processes take up the precious time of clinical research teams.
When the same information is entered in multiple places, differences naturally appear. These can include small mismatches, missing fields, or conflicting values. The teams must then spend time finding those problems and fixing them. Clean-up work creates extra back-and-forth, slows down timelines, and can delay data analysis.
There’s also the less obvious burden of managing many suppliers at once. When a single trial uses four or five technology vendors, the sponsor or CRO must deal with multiple contracts, meetings, helpdesks, training approaches, and update schedules. Such coordination takes time and money.
Optimising costs in clinical data management platforms
Specialist vendors that focus on one type of clinical data solution need dedicated teams to build, support, and sell that single tool. This is reflected in the pricing, which can be as much as five times the cost of using one vendor.
On top of the base price, some vendors charge extra for changes during the trial, such as updates after the protocol changes or for reporting features that teams increasingly expect as standard. Over the life of a trial, these add-ons can become a major budget issue.
CRScube offers an all-in-one set of tools to support clinical trials and reduce inefficiencies. Its solutions capture clinical data, manage trial activities and essential documents, and handle risk management and patient safety, all in a connected environment. In one example, a biotech company running two oncology trials chose to switch systems mid-study because their existing tool was too expensive and difficult to use.
After moving to CRScube’s data capture solution, they estimated 50%-60% lower licensing costs, improved user satisfaction, and fewer workarounds for complex tumour assessments, helping reduce the number of questions and follow-ups needed to clean the data.
To learn more about the benefits of a unified trial ecosystem, download the document below.
