Leveraging Remote-Based Regional Hubs to Improve Efficiencies and Meet Timelines

Uncover ways to leverage remote-based regional hubs to enhance clinical trial speed and efficiency.

Biopharmaceutical and biotech drug developers have faced increasing challenges in recent years. In the past decade alone, the time needed to complete a clinical trial has increased by 20–30%, and the cost to bring a new drug to market has risen to an average of about $2.6 billion. Because rising costs and extended timelines have become commonplace for drug developers, implementing strategies to combat these issues is more essential than ever. When sponsors are unable to optimize speed and efficiency, it results in issues like project delays, missed market opportunities, loss of patent protection, regulatory issues and financial strain.

Many sponsors are shifting toward functional service provider (FSP) and hybrid FSP/ full-service outsourcing (FSO) models to address these hurdles. These models offer additional resources and flexibility that help drug developers alleviate time and cost issues. One highly effective tool FSP partners use is remote-based regional hubs. This approach enhances speed and efficiency, which are crucial for success in this increasingly complex industry.

Addressing and resolving challenges through remote-based regional hubs

Remote-based regional hubs offer an alternative to traditional brick-and-mortar office setups typically located in major urban areas. These hubs support a geographically distributed remote workforce that provides greater stability and project continuity while offering the global expertise and capabilities needed to bolster clinical development success.

Remote-based regional hubs address common clinical development hurdles, including:

• Rising development costs and extended timelines
• Missed project deadlines due to recruitment and onboarding challenges
• Limited internal capabilities and operational resources
• Disrupted workflows and inflexible working hours
• Difficulty expanding into new, less competitive regions to access untapped patient populations

When FSP partners use remote-based regional hubs, they tap into a larger talent pool to secure top-tier resources and a broader range of expertise, while avoiding intense competition for the same talent that other drug developers face. This approach provides sponsors with the agility, efficiency and speed needed to expand clinical research into emerging markets or remote areas with highly qualified professionals in a cost-efficient manner.

Applications of remote-based regional hubs for improved speed and efficiency

Two of the most critical elements of success when developing clinical products are speed to market and operational efficiency. Without these elements embedded into the planning process and organizational capabilities, longer timelines are more common, leading to increased costs and lower chances of success. Remote-based regional hubs provide immense flexibility and around-the-clock resources, thus optimizing a program’s success. These hubs propel projects effectively by providing the following capabilities.

Accelerated recruitment and onboarding

Remote-based regional hubs provide proven pathways to faster hiring processes and lower employee turnover. Through career development programs, greater flexibility and better work-life balance, remote-based regional hubs typically deliver better employee retention, which in-turn creates low attrition rates, improved project continuity and reduced training costs. Further, comprehensive training and cross-training enhance team flexibility and expertise and create a workforce that easily transitions between roles as project needs evolve.

Enhanced internal capabilities

The ideal FSP partner adeptly uses remote-based regional hubs to streamline processes and create greater efficiencies, which gives sponsors the ability to offload specific functions to specialized FSP teams. This, in turn, allows sponsors to focus on core competencies and strengthen internal capabilities to create a more focused and agile clinical development operation.

Increased productivity

One of the cornerstone applications of remote-based regional hubs is the ability to create continuous workflows across global time zones. This follow-the-sun approach optimizes productivity through continuous, around-the-clock progress in collaboration with regional teams. With this methodology, teams create a chain of seamless handoffs from one time zone to the next, resulting in an uninterrupted workflow that is only accomplished when sponsors have access to resources around the world. The right FSP partner implements this structure in a way that ensures efficient governance and an optimized oversight infrastructure, thus ensuring that sponsors maximize the benefits of this model while preserving quality and compliance.

Greater flexibility beyond the traditional nine-to-five schedule

FSP partners that use remote-based regional hubs are better equipped to create bespoke solutions customized to client needs. For instance, some sponsors may require resources to be available in the same nine-to-five working hours as the client, while others may operate through intermediaries and use shift work or staggered working hours in other regions. With remote-based regional hubs, clinical development programs are more easily adapted to the drug developer’s regional needs and levels of preferred interaction.

Expansion into non-footprint countries

Many clinical development projects are confined to regions where sponsors have a direct presence. However, remote-based regional hubs enable access to a wider range of regions and patient populations without the need for direct setup of local operations. By leveraging FSP partners with a history of successful expansion into emerging markets, sponsors are able to expand beyond their own geographic footprint without straining internal capabilities and resources.

Optimizing your study with PPD FSP solutions remote-based regional hubs

PPD™ Functional Service Partnership (FSP) solutions epitomize the strategic benefits of remote-based regional hubs in FSP partnerships, offering a robust approach to improving efficiency and managing timelines in clinical development. Our strategically located remote-based regional hubs in Latin America, India, the Philippines, China and Central and Eastern Europe are led by dedicated leaders who understand the local culture and regulations and have extensive regional knowledge and expertise.

And while traditional training focuses on specific functions, our remote-based regional hubs prioritize cross-training across logical functional combinations, delivering sourcing flexibility while providing our staff with continuous professional and career development that enhances their capabilities and engagement.

This approach allows us to deliver the best-suited and most cost-effective professionals for the job — wherever they are — to ensure projects launch on time and stay on budget.

Meet your timelines with PPD FSP solutions

PPD FSP solutions help biotech and biopharmaceutical companies meet their timelines by delivering the best of the best: hard-to-find, top-tier staff with a proven history of reliably delivering clinical development and post-marketing services.

Backed by more than 30 years of support for clinical and marketed products, we know what it takes to solve your specific challenges. Whether you need to fill small gaps in services or outsource multiple functions across a portfolio, we deliver customized solutions tailored to your needs to provide much-needed resource flexibility, reliability and continuity.