Management of registries and other longitudinal studies creates unique challenges for sponsors, CROs, and other vendors. Programs of many years’ duration are faced with management and operational challenges. Management challenges include staff turnover at the sponsor as well as CROs and vendors. Proactive management of these staff changes that ensure successful ongoing team interactions is essential to program survival. Maintenance of project document history and documentation is another management challenge for long term programs. Ensuring that project decisions and documentation are well specified and accessible to all relevant stakeholders ensures common understanding and expectations across all stakeholder groups and assists project teams in addressing questions about decisions made by predecessor teams or team members.
Operational challenges for managing long term programs include changes in the marketplace and standards of care. Changes in these over time can significantly impact sponsor needs for data. Additionally data collection tools and strategies can also change significantly over time. Use of sequential adaptive methodology to anticipate potential changes at the program planning stage can facilitate changes as these are required over time.
Finally, challenges can be posed by turnover of site staff site, and long term involvement and enthusiasm of sites can be difficult to maintain. Strategies for successful engagement of sites for the study’s duration, and retraining of site staff over time require upfront planning and ongoing re-examination. Representatives from stakeholder groups including CROs, Other Vendors/Sponsors/Sites will discuss lessons learned from the management of long term programs including strategies that have contributed to successful management as well as pitfalls to avoid in managing future programs.
Managing Long-Term Registries: Strategies for Successful Management of Long-Term Clinical Programs is being presented by Eunice Franklin-Becker, Project Manager, Registries and Observational Studies, with Covance Periapproval Services and airs on Thursday, February 25, 2008. For more information or to register for the conference, please visit our site www.fxconferences.com
