Remote Clinical trials Operations: Supply Chain Management and Framework Development

Abstract

Remote clinical trials present the new approach of revolutionizing traditional clinical trials in order to decrease costs, accelerate the processes and improve the experience for participants and trial’s staff. The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly encouraged the implementation of remote clinical trials, since it became harder to reach participants and patients. The Tufts Medical Center aims to adopt remote clinical trial practices for their future clinical trials. The future trials include (1) a phase 2b a clinical trial testing the effectiveness of niclosamide in the shortening the Covid-19 contagious period in children and adolescents and (2) a data collection trial with participants suffering from Long Covid symptoms.

Although clinical trials can have different parameters and processes, this thesis suggests a general framework that can guide Tufts Medical center in their planning of the future remote trials including the design of the trial, the participant’s recruiting, the trial’s supplies’ inventory management and the data collection during and at the end of the trial. The thesis also includes limitations and points of failure of the generalized framework.