On this Throwback Thursday, we're revisiting a podcast episode featuring Dr. Jeff Kingsley, Chief Development Officer of Centricity Research, discussing his passion for research and his perspectives on the complexity of conduct in a conversation with our Chief Strategy Officer, Joseph Kim.
Learning the ropes of research
The beginning was not easy. Balancing his duties as a family medicine physician and running a fledgling research company for six months, Jeff felt a pull toward clinical research. He found a chance to show respect and prioritize patients' time, education, and resources, unlike his experience in traditional healthcare. What seemed like a hobby at first, turned into a lifelong passion for Jeff.
But right off the bat, Jeff’s small team tackled a protocol that was complex. “A trial like that, you're dosing patients at 7 a.m. instead of p.m. You need a pharmacist, you've got blinded personnel that are mixing, you've got sleeves on top of the IV tubing, there's a lot of complexity that kind of trial.” - It was tough love for sure, but it only made his commitment stronger.
Tech overload: A site's perspective
Centricity Research has grown to 43 offices across the United States and Canada, with around 600 concurrent trials focused on intensive care units, operating rooms, emergency rooms, and a significant portion in outpatient specialties like cardiology, nephrology, and pulmonology.
As protocols continue to grow more complex, scaling requires greater specialization and increasingly sophisticated tech stacks. Jeff explains, “We still have lots of (tech) players in the space, which makes life harder for the site. More usernames and passwords are just the tip of the iceberg. The bigger issue is that when you have to be 'adept' at using numerous platforms, the reality is that quality and efficiency suffer because you can’t be proficient in 14 different systems.” It seems that a major challenge is the lack of good guidance.
Lack of guidance spills into every task, creating non-value added work, without regard for the reality that sites run more than one study at a time. Jeff illustrates, “I get messages like, ‘I need you to sign on to EDC and sign off on blah, blah, blah patients,’ without specifying the trial or EDC platform. They assume you’re only handling their trial. With 600 concurrent trials, this is a huge time-waster. I have to sift through emails to figure out what they’re referring to, which adds unnecessary waste to the process.”
Embracing change with technology
The industry is often slow to change and tends to add new elements without removing what doesn't work, which sometimes has consequences. Jeff passionately states, “You're not just doing research, but you're actually spending time, investing in technology to make it better so it happens faster, more efficiently. That's what keeps me excited about research, is the ability to continually invest in the industry and figure out how do we make it even better.”
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