It seems that many people within the industry are keen to move forward with a collaborative relationship between all the main stakeholders when it comes to patient recruitment – ie patients, research sites, CROs, sponsors, solutions providers, patient groups etc.

But I’m not sure I actually see a lot of evidence of this ‘in the field’.

Indeed, it’s always struck me as being odd that the term used to describe a CRO explaining its proposal items to a sponsor is ‘bid defense’. Which seems to automatically put the relationship into an adversarial one – with one of the parties having to defend itself against attack from the other.

In order to foster an environment where truly collaborative relationships can develop, I would suggest changing from ‘bid defense meeting’ to something like ‘strategy development meeting’ might be beneficial.

As would be setting up effective feedback loops between all the stakeholders for better communication and ongoing improvements.