Harbor Clinical Blog

Bringing a new drug, therapy, or medical device to market is a time-consuming and cost-intensive process. In fact, the average clinical trial takes six or seven years to complete with a typical price tag of $2.6 billion.

The last year and a half have been a whirlwind, particularly for clinical researchers. While the trial landscape is ever-evolving, efforts to “slow the spread” of COVID-19 have accelerated the process. 

As resource forecasting for 2021 commences, it is a good time to visit existing resourcing models to ensure they can satisfy the demands of your development pipeline. One model worthy of consideration in a variety of areas is the Functional Sourcing Model (FSP). While FSP is traditionally thought of as applicable to companies with large programs and pipelines, it is increasingly being used by smaller companies who want the same benefits afforded by the FSP model which include: risk mitigation via tighter control over operational processes, consistency, scalability and flexibility in resource management, and cost controls on clinical trial conduct.

Earned Value Management (EVM) techniques are commonly used as a disciplined process to track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Cost and Schedule. Typically for long duration projects which may span several major subprojects, these techniques can be extremely useful to gauge the team’s ability to adhere to a cost budget or a critical timeline for the project. A clinical study is a classic use case for applying EVM techniques as there are major subprojects within the project spanning different resource types. Additionally, the monetary value of clinical studies ranging from ~$5M in a phase 1 trial to exceeding $100M for a Phase 3 trial offer the opportunity to realize substantial financial savings through crisp execution using KPIs as benchmarks through the study.