Anne-Marie Baughn, Director of Business Development with RxTrials, shares the invaluable benefits of strategic partnerships and volunteering in the clinical research industry. Anne-Marie sheds light on RxTrials' unique approach to empowering smaller research sites, emphasizing quality in study conduct and research site management over sheer size.
Anne-Marie Baughn, Director of Business Development with RxTrials, shares the invaluable benefits of strategic partnerships and volunteering in the clinical research industry. Anne-Marie sheds light on RxTrials' unique approach to empowering smaller research sites, emphasizing quality in study conduct and research site management over sheer size.
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 the Society. SCRS Talks 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 community. Today, we have Anne-Marie Baughn, the Director of Business Development with RxTrials here to talk about volunteerism and the importance that this action has on our industry with our clinical research sites Anne- Marie. It's great to have you, always good to have a conversation with you anytime we get a chance to connect. I'd love to start things off if you wouldn't mind with a little bit more of an expanded introduction from you.
Anne-Marie Baughn:Oh, thanks so much, Jimmy. Thanks for having me and giving me the opportunity to talk about volunteerism in our industry. My name's Anne-Marie Baughn, and I'm currently the director of business development for RxTrials. Early in my career I was a cardiac ICU nurse and soon after that I began my intro into clinical trials. I began conducting cardiology clinical trials at a large academic medical center in Washington, D. C. It was soon after that that I had the really good fortune of meeting Christine Pierre, who is the president and founder of the newly formed RxTrials back then. Christine hired me to help conduct clinical trials as a study coordinator. I believe I probably was her 2nd or 3rd employee back then. And this was back in the early 1990s, and the landscape of clinical trials was really emerging into a new frontier as it was migrating into private practice from academic centers. And so, in those early years with Christine, I really learned so much more about clinical trials, not only from conducting them, but mostly on the business of running a clinical research site. I held numerous positions with RxTrials in my early days until I landed on my current title, which is director of business development. And I still hold that position today. RxTrials is very different now over the years. It's now owned by Dr. Steven Geller, but we are, in essence, a network of clinical independent research sites and my role is pretty much to market our network of sites to industry and bring in new trial opportunities.
Jimmy Bechtel:Great. Well, thanks. Anne-Marie. Thanks for that description of RxTrials. Can you expand a little bit more on RxTrials in your mission? Speaking maybe specifically to how you empower smaller research entities to participate in studies, typically that we see are really reserved for larger organizations. That's a, it's a really interesting juxtaposition. I know that your organization focuses on.
Anne-Marie Baughn:Yeah, for sure. So RxTrials, we're a recognized premier global site network, and our mission is to bring new treatments to patients. To market quickly, so patients can get the best care. We also provide consultation and training services and basically our commitments the same as it has been since our inception in 1994 to set a standard for quality and study conduct and research site management. But we don't RxTrials really doesn't strive to be the biggest site network. We really just focus on a course group of smaller sites that want to participate in clinical trials and we empower them to. Ensure their success by guiding them in conducting quality trials, delivering high quality care to their subjects and exceeding enrollment goals for trials. We're a smaller size network, and we're able to provide our sites with direct access to us and that means a focus more on our support. So, again, we really empower smaller research sites to get involved and to know that they can make a difference too. You don't always have to be the biggest site network or biggest site out there.
Jimmy Bechtel:That's great. And Marie, it's, it's interesting and always good to see organizations out there advocating for for the little guy, right? In this world, this sea of clinical research sites and, and relationships. It's, it's awesome to see. Speaking of relationships RxTrials, obviously, based on your introduction there has been working with SCRS for a good number of years, and we really can't you, Dr. Geller, the rest of the Rx Trials team can't thank you enough and value your contributions to our community that you've made over the years and in leadership and advisement there. Why? Have you continued working with SCRS and how has this partnership been beneficial then to RxTrials?
Anne-Marie Baughn:Oh, yeah. I have and I continue to work with SCRS because SCRS has a special place in my heart. And I know that sounds kind of corny, but it's true. And it's really because of Christine. SCRS was Christine's dream and I think anybody who was associated with her back then in the SCRS early days can really understand how passionate she was about raising the bar for sites in the industry. Her passion and ambition was contagious and as a result. We all worked hard to help bring her dream to a reality. Those that know Christine know she was a master of getting people to jump on the so called bandwagon. She was like the Pied Piper. I used to call her basically because any idea she would, would come up with, she'd have a million followers and in no time, but one of the things that I look back on is we quickly learned. At the very 1st site solution summit that was held in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I think we had back then a grand total of 25 attendees that I learned that there was a real power in sites coming together to share best practices and basically putting all competition aside. And that is really what, I think SCRS is so good about promoting and in that non competition, we're all in this together and let's make this a better industry. The biggest benefit of RxTrials association with the SCRS is 1. I can just say, we've learned so much from all of the excellent educational sessions that SCRS provides and puts on. It's just amazing the amount of knowledge that is imparted and that sites can use in their day to day business. SCRS has made RxTrials a better site network in many, many ways from budgeting and contracting to recruitment. And one of the things I find so valuable about us, and which is such a benefit for all is the resources to get your questions answered and get advice on and basically any question or topic you have. We really have the ability to run any scenario or question by any of our professional colleagues and we get we get a prompt response. That's a professional answer. So that's invaluable. And for me personally to SCRS has been instrumental in increasing RxTrials number of studies that we conduct. There's really no other organization or meeting like the summit where you're allowed to work elbow to elbow with sponsors and CROs for an entire weekend. And this has been, as I said, invaluable to sites in the business development arena as well.
Jimmy Bechtel:Great Anne-Marie, it's. So refreshing to hear perspective from an organization that's been with SCRS for so long from the site side truly has been a valuable relationship. And thank you for emphasizing the point about how we work to break down those barriers, right? Remove that that sense of competition that doesn't need to exist amongst sites. And again appreciate RxTrials being one of the organizations that's helped pave the way for that and paving the way also for those involvement opportunities and part of what comes with kind of breaking down those barriers is that concept of volunteerism and being part of that community, contributing to the community, giving back to that community. So what do you maybe believe are some of the biggest benefits sites can gain by getting involved and volunteering with industry organizations like SCRs.
Anne-Marie Baughn:Yeah, I mean, I will just start by saying, look what SCRS has accomplished in the industry over the past several years. I am no way taking away from SCRS is amazing staff because you guys are the absolute backbone, but a lot of these accomplishments could not have been reached without the help of volunteers. The benefits of volunteering with SCRS and I'll use that as an example of the industry in general, as I mentioned before, I think just across the board sites are going to benefit in all aspects of their site business from financial, clinical, HR. One of the pillars of SCRS is to educate and that educational piece is so important to sites. We all know that. 1. All sites are not created equal. We have so many different types of sites, but every type of site gets the benefit of being involved in volunteering, because you're basically you're when you volunteer with an organization, like SCRS, you're instrumental in shaping the way our industry will move forward sites that volunteer with SCRS along with sponsors and CROs. We're also part of planning and implementing these educational materials that are so important and the ways to volunteer with SCRS are endless and the impact of volunteering is great. One of the examples that I would bring up is what I'm involved in is, and people may not know that this is even kind of behind the scenes, but is that our accreditation process, you know, and being a registered nurse. Way back when I still hold that degree and that title, but our ability to provide nursing contact hours for our educational sessions is so important. And we do that through ANCC, which is the American nurses credentialing center. We are behind the scenes as volunteers reviewing any educational components, materials that come forward that are going to be presented to ensure that they are non promotional and that again, being 1 of the pillars of SCRS is this nobody is promoting their business. We are trying to all work together and break the competition barriers down. So the accreditation portion is a great way to volunteer with SCRS. If you're a nurse, I believe you have to be a bachelor's prepared. R. N. We need you, we need you to be on our nurse planning committee to be able to help us review all the educational material that is coming forth. The time commitment is not a lot. I would just say around the summit time, it might be a little bit more busy, but it's only. Not even an hour a week during a general cycle. So we would be very interested in talking to you if you're interested, please reach out to 1 of the SCRS staff members, Jimmy, Darlene, anyone or myself and I, we would be happy to tell you more about that opportunity.
Jimmy Bechtel:Thanks for the plug on that, Anne-Marie. Yes, it's, that is one of many very valuable, very impactful opportunities for sites to contribute, to be involved there and is extremely important, as Anne Marie mentioned, are the accreditation of our webinars and our summit content is a huge value add for the entire community. And I also want to give a extended thank you to those that are currently volunteering for our different initiatives and our different programs and the nurse review panel couldn't do the work that we do without you. It's critical to the work that SCRS does.
Anne-Marie Baughn:Absolutely.
Jimmy Bechtel:So Anne-Marie, we'll begin to wrap our conversation up here. What advice do you have for sites looking to volunteer within the industry? And it doesn't have to be at SCRS. We talked about that, but maybe in the industry and what types of things should they expect as they seek and become involved in that volunteerism process.
Anne-Marie Baughn:Yeah. My, my best advice would be get involved. You won't regret it. It's amazing to see how transformative at the grassroots level, the volunteerism can be. You're part of an amazing industry with an amazing group of incredible research professionals and every little thing that you do is a volunteer makes a difference. You really don't want to underestimate. Oh, I can only have this. I don't have a lot of time. I can only give this so much, but every little bit helps the smallest effort can multiply to make significant improvements in our industry and really, ultimately, the winner is our patients who will benefit from new treatments. It's been an amazing experience for me. Personally, volunteerism means a lot to me, not only in my professional life, but in my personal life. So again, I think people can expect to see the benefit. Objectively and subjectively, it's a good feeling when you're doing things for the, for the greater good. So you kind of get that inner feeling, but then also, you're going to, you're just going to see, keep the improvements in our industry moving forward and that's what we're all about trying to get those treatments to patients, quickly. So, yeah, I support it fully and again, if anyone has any questions about some opportunities that I know about, or, within SCRS please reach out, and we're happy to talk with you.
Jimmy Bechtel:Excellent. Well, Anne-Marie, I think that's a really great place for us to conclude our conversation here. Thank you for sharing some of the insights about your organization, as well as volunteer opportunities, and really the impact, I think, is critical to what volunteerism and being part of something outside of the work that you do day in and day out can do. It breaks up the monotony of the work and it does contribute to advancing the work that we do for patients ultimately. Again, thank you for being here. Thank you for the conversation. And thank you for sharing.
Anne-Marie Baughn:Oh, thank you, Jimmy. It was a pleasure.
Jimmy Bechtel:For all that are listening, make sure that you register for upcoming summits being held throughout the year by visiting the summit page on our website myscrs.org. While you're on our website, be sure to also check out other SCRS publications built for the community. In the publications section of that same website. We appreciate your participation in today's program and look forward to having you join us for more great content coming out soon. Thanks again for listening.\