Mastering Clinical Research Workforce Challenges

In a world where the demand for qualified research professionals is on the rise, training programs play a pivotal role in expanding and diversifying the talent pool. Kunal D. Patel,  Medical Director at iheed, will shed light on their recently launched Master of Science in Clinical Research program and how training programs are helping expand the clinical research workforce. 

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Jimmy Bechtel 0:00

welcome and thank you for joining the Society for Clinical Research Sites for SCRS Talks. I'm Jimmy Bechtel, the Vice President of Site Engagement with SCRS. SCRS Talks is a program that allows our partners and those that we work closely with to take a few minutes to address issues of industry concern, share exciting achievements, and to learn more about our clinical research community. Today, we have Kunal Patel, the medical director with IHEED here to share with us a little bit more about his organization, as well as some work that's being done to tackle workforce and education challenges, medicine in general, but also in clinical research. Kunal, it's great to have you. We'd love to learn a little bit more about you and a little bit more about IHEED.

Kunal Patel 0:47

Great. Well, Jimmy, thanks very much for that. I mean, I suppose where I could start, you know, first thing was nobody likes talking about themselves, right? But I suppose I should start with that is that I am a doctor. I'm a physician by trade, and I fall in between a very initial and interesting specialty, which is the nexus of international development, public health, and travel medicine, where I support Clinical workers who go abroad NGO workers and diplomats. That's very niche. That's my clinical role. But outside of that, as you've gathered in the introduction, I am very much focused on my work. I do. I heed as the medical director, which is influenced by my clinical. Work as well, which is in implementing all my knowledge and all my clinical expertise into driving innovative medical education across the globe using digital tools and Within the organization itself. That's obviously cross departmental whether it's ranging from academic Affairs to product management to building relationships, and that's where I currently stand as is

Jimmy Bechtel 1:47

That's great. Thank you so much. It sounds like it's a holistic approach to education. And so that's that's great to hear because that's a lot of what we need when it comes to educating our clinical research professionals and our medical professionals that eventually become clinical research professionals. So expand on that a little bit, Kunal, and tell us a little bit about IHEED and what makes IHEED What you do different, maybe expanding on some of those points that you had made just a moment ago and and really what the goals are for the work that you all do.

Kunal Patel 2:19

Yeah, absolutely. So the big issue we have globally is that for many years, large organizations like the WHO and others and number of governments have highlighted that we have a huge. Health workforce crisis. We are short when it comes to adequately trained doctors, nurses and other health care professionals. But this is also the case within the clinical research space. So there's a crossover between the two, as you can imagine. So I don't like to separate them entirely. What happened around maybe 10, 12 years ago as digital became more prominent in health training, particularly via mobile phones, was the whole idea of delivering health education via mobile, you know, particularly in low resource settings where we have fragmented health systems where we don't have enough health care professionals. We at iHEED were very much advocates and In terms of how we want to deliver this training, it has to be quality assured. It has to be accredited and it has to be delivered efficiency, efficiently and also at a low cost. Because as you can imagine, you know, the cost of education can be quite high in some parts of the world, but also, you know unaffordable in many other parts. So what we've done as a business is ensure that we deliver the best in quality and training ranging from diplomas to master's programs that are online. Accessible via any device and innovative in the way that they engage students and also meet competencies. And that's the key word because the problem is when you're clinical or whether you're working clinical research. A lot of education that people are getting online right now are via free courses, low cost courses that have not been quality assured that have not got a design process in mind and what that results in is actually in. in very poor learning. You know, you can ask some of these, like, for example, people talk about massively online courses that are free. You get a nice piece of paper at the end of it. That doesn't mean much when you're a doctor that needs to actually improve in your level of knowledge of diabetes or public health. Or if you want to expand your career and go into a leadership role, you need university qualified and accredited courses. And that's what our is to deliver those in a clear. Detailed but fun and innovative way that's accessible to everyone across the globe.

Jimmy Bechtel 4:32

Excellent. Sounds like there's a lot to be excited for about the work that you're doing there. The holistic, again, I really like the holistic approach that you guys are taking to the education and to then to knowledge building for the potential and current workforce that's out there. There's such a gap as you've identified. In medicine in general, but also then in even further. So, in clinical research and clinical trials, and it's hard to have 1 without the other. And it's hard to really see a positive future for clinical research without having an effective and really solid foundation for the education and the individuals that are coming into. What we're trying to do here and bring new medicines to patients.

Kunal Patel 5:15

No, absolutely. And I think what's interesting about all of that is that we need to bring it. And when I say need, it's we have huge issues when it comes to the workforce, whether it be in the clinical research or, you know, nursing, for example, we're seeing protests across the globe from all sorts of health practitioners. In terms of their difficulties in their work situations in terms of the stress and stress is obviously increased since the onset of the covid pandemic. And so now we're at this junction where it's. We're at where we have to go well, hold on, we need to not only support these individuals and communities in the clinical research space, but also, as I said elsewhere, in terms of. Retaining their jobs, delivering good clinical research and good health care. That's also a benefit to the community and to patients, but to do that, we need to get the training right. And that's where the opportunity lies.

Jimmy Bechtel 6:12

That's exactly right. I couldn't agree more. So let's talk a little bit about that, that training in the education. So your organization, he recently started offering a master. Of science in clinical research through or in collaboration with the University of Warwick. What inspired you or drove you all to offer that course and maybe talk a little bit as well about some of the outcomes or what a student could expect to gain from a course like that?

Kunal Patel 6:42

For sure. What's interesting, I touched on the onset of the pandemic, and before the pandemic began, we were offering obviously a number of programs, and they included, you know, a Master's in Diabetes Care, a Master's in Public Health, and when you engage more with people in the clinical space, or people who want to enter the clinical space, in any form or fashion, we were beginning to see, and especially as the public became more aware of trials and research and vaccines. You shouldn't realize there's this alarming gap in the clinical research space, and the numbers are somewhat frightening, but, you know, difficult to handle for it. Because if you actually think about it, we've seen since the onset of the pandemic a higher resignation rate amongst clinical research practitioners. We're seeing high amounts of nursing turnover. For example, the National Cancer Institute in Michigan, I 40 percent. And yet at the same time, what we recognized within IHEAT was that we're seeing an increased burden of cardiovascular disease, cancer, obviously the complications from COVID, increasing mental illness, notably increased diagnoses of dementia and Alzheimer's. And when you think about the cost of what that's going to do to public health systems, and obviously I have a strong interest in that because of my clinical background, you suddenly realize, well, We're going to have huge staffing issues. The expertise that we need in clinical research is not necessarily there. And it's good to see that this is being recognized. We're seeing this in some publications within the journal space, but it's still not talked about enough. I mean, it goes beyond the staff shortage. I mean, if I was to take you back to, you know, to school, you know, if you ask any kid, you know, what is their awareness of clinical research as a career? You know, they would just say, I want to find a cure for dementia, for example, because my granddad had it, you know, but usually means they envision themselves as a scientist, but we all know a scientist or a P. I. in the clinical research will form is probably only 10% of the of the clinical research workforce. The rest of the workforce is a huge network of people and. We felt that it was important to ensure that that 90% is well trained. I can tell you from personal experience when I've gone to events with clinical research technology companies and so on, when I speak to people in the sales workforce, when I speak to their data people, their UX people, there is a lack of insight of what clinical research is and it's not their fault. But there needs to be, they need to be up to date if you're going, if you're to engage with a physician or future PI or a sponsor, understanding what the, what the main phases of a clinical trial are absolutely essential, but it also feeds back to what you do. So let's say I talked about UX designers, you know, within the clinical research workforce, they want to design software that's going to help deliver trials. Yeah, but understanding what the patient goes through, what the clinician goes through, what the PI goes through is absolutely essential. And if you have a foundation of training. Whether it be a diploma in our Master's of Clinical Research, or if you complete the full Master's and you get a Master's degree, that's going to benefit you, your employer, and the clinical research community. And this has been specifically highlighted more as the pathways into these professions are quite unclear. You know, most people that go into clinical research, whether it be for a CRO, for example, it's quite organic where they stumble upon it. But by us delivering such a masters, we can then provide that pathway going forward. So you can see, I mean, I could talk for ages about this in terms of the, the work force crisis issue, but we definitely recognized it because it had parallels with the overall health workforce crisis that would be like, which I touched on earlier, and therefore we felt there's an absolute need to deliver. A low cost masters that's accessible to everyone across the globe, and that is online and that can actually actually help you still continue study while actually working full time. And that's what we've been able to achieve. And now we've got, you know, students from across the gulf from the UK as we started this year, and it's a huge international network within these cohorts, which really helps also benefit the workforce. As a secondary effect,

Jimmy Bechtel 11:09

it's really, really cool and interesting story to hear the development and what the reasonings are again behind that program in that that masters level course. And I think it's really important that we as an education based organization take the approach that you did in that. We're allowing and facilitating individuals to maintain their work and then get education while they're still working. And be able to balance those 2 things. Because it's it's. We're seeing that people that are seeking these master's level certifications are working professionals. To your point, there are individuals that are doing this that just want to further their career or further their education in the clinical research space and really develop some of those skills that go just beyond what you might be able to learn in sort of a mentorship or shadowing type of environment. So it's great to hear that there's positive outcomes for the course as well as a good outcome. Solid foundation underneath what this program can bring somebody for sure.

Kunal Patel 12:19

And I think it's the other thing that it addresses is that what I may have touched on is that the clinical research space is becoming more complex. It's, and rapidly so, you know, if we think about decentralization, the new technologies that are coming in, your workforce needs to be somewhat on top of that, you know, and yeah, you can do a nice little side session at a conference, but not everyone can access those conferences, not everyone can go to those, you know, so having a formal training, which, the competencies of what clinical research should be in terms of its delivery and management, Is essential for people, even if that the beginning of the careers halfway through or, you know, at a high level, we always need to be updated and that's partly because, as I said, the complexity, the surging expectation of using innovative technology and the final thing that I forgot to mention is that actually the number of clinical trials worldwide. in terms of registration, not necessarily completion, has blossomed. It's bloomed. It's almost overwhelming in terms of the numbers. It's not slowing down. So we need to make sure that we keep up with that.

Jimmy Bechtel 13:31

I couldn't agree more. Keeping up with that is this is a challenge. It's a challenge for the medical industry in general, but particularly in clinical research, which has always been an industry that moves maybe. faster sometimes than it should. So I appreciate that sentiment. But speaking of moving fast and trying to find new individuals, considering that increasing demand for some qualified professionals in clinical research, what role do training programs like what IHE has to offer play in expanding and diversifying the pool of talent that we are seeing become available?

Kunal Patel 14:12

So, I think the key word you hit there was diversifying. As we know, in the clinical research space, diversity is an issue, and one of the key recommendations for workforce regeneration in this space is, as you highlighted, is ensuring we have a diverse workforce, but that to do that, you need to provide access and advancement and training, particularly for historically underserved communities. So, the nice thing about online learning, especially if it's. You know, fragmented in terms of delivery, ensuring that you can still carry out your job and do whatever you have to do at home or in the professional space is that we can engage with potential people entering the clinical research space, who you wouldn't have been able to before this includes in not only just locally in terms of your cities and your states, but also in terms of continents, you know, we are programs of global, you know, like I said, I mentioned, we've got students from the Gulf, you know, you ask most CROs in the U. S. How many people do they, how many, clinical research associates do they get to meet from the Gulf? Probably not many, but through an online space you will. So the opportunities are there also within the programs themselves. You can actually engage with future clinical research professionals from all the way from Southeast Asia to the Gulf, to East Africa, to Latin America, and to Europe because it's delivered online. And so the opportunities there, and then it establishes this universal competency based delivery and definition of what clinical research education and what the future roles will be, you know, we talk about what, what this could open it up to. I mean, there, I think I mentioned. That, you know, everyone knows about PIs and drug scientists, and people listening to this are probably very familiar with these terms, but, you know, some of my future students wouldn't. It's like, you know, there's tons of career options in clinical research, you know, you could be a coordinator, you can be a scientist, manager, pharmacovigilant associate, you could be in regulation, you could be involved in policy at government. You can just be a biased statistician, but by having the foundations that a course like this delivers, and especially if you're from a background that has not previously engaged in this workforce or been involved with it, you will find an online space and environment like this is collaborative. It's what we call a virtual community of practice. You get to interprofessionally engage with people from other professions. And that only just only doesn't just benefit you as an individual. It benefits. The entire space because we know once you exit the program, you're going to have a network of alumni, you know, you're going to have potentially new people to work with in the future. You're also going to bring back a lot of experience from other parts of the world to your current work. And so there's an egality and element to this. Providing a democracy around education is important as well, and that's what we try to do. But also at the same time, we're trying to achieve a global standard of excellence in training and qualification for professionals. And that's something that we also take very seriously and ensure that that's the case. And I see that now. Some organizations, such as those that work in technology for trials, are engaging with this because they realize that actually, we as a technology provider, for example, and I'm only using this as an example, as an example, Jamie, is that You know, technology providers in the clinical research space realize they work with dozens of sponsors, dozens of CROs, but yet they've still got to provide the workforce and the technology. So they too are beginning to see the benefit of this. If we get people trained, that was a lot. I hope it made sense.

Jimmy Bechtel 17:49

Yeah, it sure does. Right? There's a lot to tease out there. But again, I think the important thing to your. Point at the beginning of your your answer here was around how important it is that we focus on diversifying that pool, bringing not only people from different backgrounds and different experiences and walk his walks of life, but different different places in the world. Different socioeconomic status. There's so many things that qualifies diversity, and it's so important for us to consider those things and really focus on them, but also enable the education for those diverse populations. Thank In so far as allowing them to be part of clinical research, because we talk all the time within the industry about how it is, how important it is that we build relationships of trust with our patients and participants. And in order to do that, there's something something to be said about how much value there is in working with people that are from or. Currently part of the same. We'll just call it walk of life as you are or or or look the same as you. So I think that's a great component to the training that you guys are bringing forward.

Kunal Patel 19:00

No, for sure. I think one thing I forgot to mention and it's something that we easily forget, even in education and even in the clinical space is that. Any sort of formal training, if it's of a good quality, which I can tell you right now, the University of Warwick, one of the top universities in the world, you know, it's, you create a strong and clear identity. If you graduate from a program like this, or if you exit with a certificate or diploma, You have an identity. You can actually go to these various meetings that we're all aware of and be like, oh, hey, yeah, I got the master's in research. This is what my project was on. This is what I actually studied. Oh, I know about that. Oh, and oh, you did that master's too. Oh, great. Oh, oh, you've got a PG dip in that. Oh, brilliant. I did that. You're providing that identity. Coming back to what I was saying about the workforce crisis and how people are losing their confidence, their stress, everyone. Can you provide people this, this, this identity after training, after education, it strengthens your workforce. You know, you can, you can consider yourself a professional, you know, and that ultimately allows sponsors. You know, CROs, you name it, to promote visibility, recognition, but also to value their workforce. And I think that is something we don't talk about enough is that how we value ourselves. You know, how do we maintain our identities within what is a very broad Difficult and stressful space right now. And you know, and that's hopefully with the delivery of such a program, we can help with that.

Jimmy Bechtel 20:33

That's great. Absolutely. I couldn't agree with you more. Let's begin to wrap things up here with our with our final correct. With our final question, what sort of career opportunities and pathways open up for graduates of this program? And I guess further, how does I heed support those students in their development beyond just completion of the program? I think it's really important for us in modern education to look just beyond the document, the diploma and and talk about the holistic Educated student as a result of participation.

Kunal Patel 21:09

Yeah, for sure. I think we should always group people in a couple of little groups here in terms of where you want to take your. Qualifications and learnings and what you want to do with them. So you will always get students who come into this fresh who are only a very early in their potential professions or their careers, or they may not be very clear as to what they want to do. And they feel the masters that this will help. That's. What I would say the group which who have a huge choice in terms of where they want to go, and I touched on some of those roles where it would be a research scientist, whether it be a trial manager, whether you're working in policy, you name it, or regulation. The interesting thing is with the masters, and this is why a masters is so different to undergraduate or bachelor's degree is that. You are getting people bringing in their own experiences, you know, you could have a doctor who's a student one side. You can have a sales guy. You can have someone who's purely worked in graphics design. And I would always say as an academic and a tutor on these programs to my students, which is. Utilize what you have, so enhance what you have and bring it back to where you are, or bring it to the clinical research, let's say you enter this, let's say you've been working in drug policy your entire life, just writing policy documents for government, and you suddenly do this masters, you suddenly understand what trials are, you suddenly understand design and research analysis, what person centered research is, you know, what leadership involves in this role, you can then bring that back, either back to your current role, Or you bring that in combination with your skills and experience to the industry or to academia, because you can obviously work in academia, and academia has a very important role in clinical research, as we know. So those are the two groups of people I would say we want to encourage to come on to the program and be engaged with. But this is for education as a whole. It's not just our program. You want people from all sorts of backgrounds entering this, because the opportunities are endless. As I said earlier in the, in our chat. You know, only 10% of the research workforce are PIs or, you know, the rest are a huge plethora of people and If we can get people into these roles, the public health benefit is massive, as we know, and I talked about the diseases that we want to address when we think about President Biden's relaunch of Cancer Moonshot, you know, and reducing cancer death rates, you know, we can bring people from all sorts of backgrounds. And if you have an interest in trying to tackle these issues, study, and I'm not saying study all your life. You don't have to be a professor. But get a little bit of study into you, you know, understand the basic principles of clinical research or whether it be public health or leadership and bring that back, bring that back to your community. And that's what we need. And I think our programs certainly allows you to do that. And we're seeing that with our students in various other programs as well. The testimonials we get from students from the Gulf, as I said, from Malaysia, Singapore, East Africa, the UK, you know, it's, it's fantastic to see what they're doing with these qualifications afterwards. And that is also something that you will be able to tap once you do a program like this as well. Because the key thing of education, whether it's an IHEAP program or not, is ensuring what you've said, Jimmy, is that Can I still keep touch base with all the students that I worked with? Absolutely. And we will encourage that and we will support you in any way we can to do so.

Jimmy Bechtel 24:37

Excellent. I think that's a really great place for us to conclude our conversation with your very inspiring note in a very. Positive sentiment around what the power of education can be for participants in this program, but hopefully also participants in other programs and just general education. I think that after support is so important to the work that we do. So can all thank you so much for being here with us. Thank you for sharing your insights and your knowledge and a little bit more about the program. I hope that our listeners are further. Inspired to take a look into their own education and their own path and process forward and clinical research on and and see what the next step is for them. So again, thank you for being here with us. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure for those of you listening. Make sure that you check out our upcoming summits on our website. My s. E. R. S. dot org, where we. Still a lot of potential education for our members and non members of SCRS while you're on our website, my SCRS. org. Be sure to also check out other other publications like SCRS talks that we've made for our community. I want to thank everyone for their participation in today's program and look forward to bringing you more great content in the future. Thanks again for listening.