Bioclinica, a specialty clinical trials technology and services provider, has announced two new divisions, creating an integrated offering focused on patient engagement. With the announcement comes the combination of Bioclinica’s extensive global clinical research site network and patient recruitment-retention engine under the Global Clinical Research business segment.

Bioclinica President and CEO John Hubbard, Ph.D., said, "Our combined offering allows us to take an integrated approach to connect eligible study participants and clinical research sites by leveraging our collective resources, expertise and technology." While Bioclinica teams work together or independently depending on the trial, Hubbard said, "Together our comprehensive approach enables us to provide enhanced site enrollment rates surpassing the industry’s traditional site model."

Global Clinical Research President Elizabeth Thiele said, "Our goals are two-fold: improving the overall patient experience and minimizing study timelines for sponsors and CROs. We do this by recruiting the right people for the right clinical trial and then seeing them through the continuum of care at our research sites with ongoing personal interaction to enhance the patient experience."

With the 2014 merger of Bioclinica and CCBR-SYNARC, Research Network has an established system of investigator sites, making Bioclinica one of the largest global, independent site networks in the world with a top 20 pharma work history. The high-performing and high-enrolling sites have demonstrated therapeutic expertise in Alzheimer's, cardiovascular, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, endocrinology, diabetes, vaccines and pain. All Bioclinica sites are connected by best-in-class recruitment practices, global SOPs, and quality systems to generate the highest quality of data across the entire network. Each site is outfitted with state-of-the-art medical testing equipment and is staffed by physicians, nurses, study coordinators, technicians and other medical professionals and personnel with therapeutic area specialization.

"Having research teams embedded in the community is an asset to patients, sponsors and CROs," Dr. Hubbard said. "Our global-local model can minimize the number of investigative sites needed to run a clinical trial, further reducing study delivery time and cost."

The Patient Recruitment-Retention division, fully integrated into the organization since the MediciGlobal acquisition in 2015, has a 94% overall success rate in patient recruitment and retention programs, with more than 200 successfully completed programs in a variety of therapeutic areas. The team pioneered social media and other digital strategies for patient outreach, and developed a scalable and secure global operating platform with mobile engagement apps. More than 30 patient communities have been established, many of which are the largest in the world in their therapeutic area. "Our vibrant patient communities cross all key therapeutic areas and have a collective membership of hundreds of thousands of engaged potential study participants," Dr. Hubbard said. "These vast, active online communities are readily accessible to sponsors and CROs when a trial is ready to begin enrolling."

Thiele added, "Both the Research Network and Patient Recruitment-Retention divisions are hyper-focused on the patient and employ technology-enabled strategies. Having such strong patient engagement come from two sources within our expanding organization gives sponsors and CROs an inroad to qualified patients."

Dr. Hubbard remarked, "We have many unique synergies across our Global Clinical Research business segment and the company overall to support patients and our customers holistically. By connecting patients and sites we are making clinical trials more accessible for people everywhere—making it a better experience for them and all research stakeholders."