Empowered Patient Podcast Removing Burdens Throughout the Global Clinical Trial Ecosystem for Patients and Researchers with KimberLee Heidmann Scout Clinical
KimberLee Heidmann is the Executive VP of Patient Experience and Customer Success at Scout Clinical, a third-party provider of patient services for clinical trial participants and their families. As a global partner of sponsors of trials, Scout oversees travel, visas, housing and accommodations, and patient payments. Working with underserved communities and patients with rare diseases, Scout removes barriers to participation in clinical trials and supports researchers in their care of patients and trial protocols.
KimberLee elaborates, "Right now, the focus in clinical research is very much on diversity and inclusion and health equity. We're excited about that because we're passionate about that here at Scout. We're uniquely positioned to help the sponsors and the sites with those hard-to-reach patient populations. You're seeing a lot more in clinical research, especially in the rare disease space, where we're even looking at cross-border enrollment and bringing patients from underserved populations to areas where there are centers of excellence for treatment and clinical research."
"Another thing that's burdensome that we've received a lot of feedback from clinical trial sites is the requirement to use a lot of different vendors and have access to different technology. Technology has been such a wonderful thing for the clinical trial industry, and we've brought so many wonderful things to the forefront in terms of wearable devices and diaries and the DCT model, where we're trying to relieve the burden of the patients to have to go to the clinical trial site. All of these things are wonderful, and they're excellent tools for clinical research."
"But in some respects, they do add a burden to the researchers to have to, either as a sponsor or a CRO, manage all of those different aspects or for the clinical trial site to engage with all of these different tools. Then, if you carry that down into the patient, the patients and their families, participants and their families, a lot of times they are being introduced to this technology as well. Managing the full trial ecosystem can be very difficult for researchers and patients."
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