Beyond Buzzwords: Celebrating Excellence in Patient Centricity

Nick Spittal, Chief Operations Officer at Velocity Clinical Research, and Pat Roselle, Global Head of Patient Stakeholder Engagement at Sanofi are here to celebrate Velocity's win of the 2023 Excellence in Patient Centricity Award sponsored by Sanofi. Hear insights from Velocity and Sanofi on the importance of patient-centricity and the initiatives that led to this award. Plus, we'll explore the future goals of both Sanofi and Velocity in advancing clinical research with a patient-focused approach.

Transcript

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 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 learn more about our community today. We have a couple individuals to share one of those exciting achievements with us, Pat Roselle, the global head of patient stakeholder engagement with, Sanofi and Nick Spittal, the chief operations officer with velocity clinical research, here to celebrate and talk a little bit about Velocity's recent recipiency of the 2023 patient centricity award sponsored by Sanofi. I'd love to learn a little bit more about each of you. Let's start with you,

Patricia Roselle: 0:52

Pat. Thanks, Jimmy. And I'd like to just start by saying I really feel very honored to be here today. And having this opportunity to chat with Nick I'd like to 1st start by congratulating Nick and velocity on receiving the Excellence in Patient Centricity Award. Sanofi is absolutely delighted to be the sponsor of that award. I did have the opportunity to review all of the submissions from the other organizations. And I have to tell you, it's really so incredibly exciting to see the work that Other groups are doing but special congratulations to Velocity for standing out and, achieving this award. Just briefly, I've been with Sanofi for 15 years. And the last 10, I have spent really focused on what does it mean to be and how do we act as an organization that focuses on the patient and I know patient centricity is a bit of a buzzword, but the reality is for us, it is about taking those patient insights and their voice and translating them into actions. And that was really the impetus for what we saw in velocity submission. So I'm happy to be here on behalf of Sanofi in this award.

Jimmy Bechtel: 2:15

Thanks, Pat. That's great. And also extending my Congratulations to Nick and the Velocity team as well. Nick if you wouldn't mind also following up with a little bit of

Nicholas Spittal: 2:25

who you are. Sure, Jimmy. Good afternoon. Thank you for that and and thank you to Pat and Anne Sanofi for the recognition and for SCRS for sponsoring this award. Certainly proud to be the recipients, but I think as, as Pat said, there's a tremendous amount of really great work that all sites are doing in this space and we're just, we're just one of many. So Glad to represent the site space and what's going on with really being the access point to patient care through clinical research. Just a bit of background for me obviously got a, got a big team here and I'm happy to represent Velocity, but it's all about a large team. I'm actually coming up on my one year anniversary here at Velocity after over 20 years in the CRO space, so been doing a lot of, Learning myself over the last year and you know, kind of bringing some of that that organizational resolution to what we're doing here at Velocity as the largest multitherapeutic clinical research site business. We operate now in in about 90 locations globally. We've actually expanded in recent weeks into a large footprint in Germany and added Poland. So we're multinational here in US and Europe. And our mission and vision are to accelerate the research process. And we see that providing access to research for our participants is really the key to being able to solve what is a big challenge for sponsor organizations. We know that research delays are are happening 75, 85 percent of the time in, in research trials. And half of that is coming from sites. And I see you know what velocity doing and and and many other sites as being key to solving that problem for sponsor companies.

Jimmy Bechtel: 4:03

Thanks, Nick. Great to have again both of you on here, and I'll extend yet another congratulations to you and the Velocity team on receiving the 2023 Excellence in Patient Centricity that was awarded at our Global Site Solutions Summit last October. So, Nick, can you start and share a little bit more about Velocity's commitment to patient centricity? Maybe some insight into the initiatives that led to winning that award.

Nicholas Spittal: 4:28

Yeah, certainly. And as I mentioned, our vision is really to advance research through patient access. And we see research as a viable care option for many of our constituency. And I think we've got a number of things that we're doing here that help to highlight that. So just a couple of examples. We actually Operate a patient advisory council which is a ongoing effort where we're collecting feedback on trial participation from those that have done research with us in the past. We're actually in the process right now of expanding that to over 50 members for 2024, really aiming for a broad representation of age, race, ethnicity, gender, geography, to make sure we get a holistic view of what we're doing well and where we can do better. That's a group that we actually compensate for their time and we meet regularly to get their feedback and what we can learn from that group. Certainly have some highlights of that we've learned from them in the past. On an ongoing basis do a patient survey at the conclusion of each of our visits. So we're gaining constant feedback at the site level of what's going well, of what patients like about their research experience. We make sure that we follow up on items that we might learn from that whether that's directly with a patient or in actions that we take back into our organization. We actually publish the insights that we gain from those patient surveys to all of our operations teams on a monthly basis so that everyone knows what patient experiences is like across the board. We recently undertook the efforts to initiate a a BIPOC review committee for all of the community facing advertising material that we use to make sure that we're capturing the right voice and content that's pertinent to addressing concerns and needs of communities of color. And we also do all of our advertising bilingually here in the U. S. So in both English and Spanish, and of course, overseas, we're doing that in local language as well German in Germany and Polish in Poland. And then recently we have started an effort with one of our partners to offer Multilanguage capabilities in real time at all of our sites. So a patient walks in the door speaking any language, and we're able to immediately initiate a discussion with that patient, go through the consenting process, no matter what language capabilities we have on site. And when we started that last year, actually, within within a week, we had enrolled our first American Sign Language patient without having the patient come in with their own translator. You know, I think in 20 plus years of research, I can't recall ever having done that. So that was pretty exciting for us. So I think there's a good example there of how we're making sure that we're making research accessible. And then, one of the things that we're also doing right now is is deploying a lot of technology. We learned from our, our patient advisory council on their desires on how they like to be contacted. And, and we've deployed a lot of our own technology for doing patient outreach and through that gaining a lot of behavioral insights as well at scale so that we know how often do people like to be contacted or not contacted and what time of day and what day of the week. So really being able to tailor our messaging as to what works best for the patients that we serve.

Jimmy Bechtel: 7:38

That's incredible. Nick, what I really like about what you've explained here is that it touches so many different facets, right? It's not just one thing. It's not one plan. It's not one path that you were on. It's multifaceted, and I think that's so important as we look to see what we can do as an industry that we take those multifaceted approaches into consideration. I also like the fact that it touches so deeply into diversity and really what that means and the importance of enrolling diverse and underrepresented patient populations into our clinical trials and, and how your advisory committee and the plans and work that you all do focuses so much on that aspect of clinical trial. So it's, it's great to hear a little bit more information and some detail about obviously why you were chosen to be the recipients of this year's award. Nick, I do want to dive into that patient advisory council a little bit deeper. That's what I would consider to be one of the more kind of original and unique aspects of what you guys have done here and, and why you won this award. So can you share some examples of insights that that group was able to provide and that have influenced some of the decisions and the operations, how you approach your clinical trials at Velocity?

Nicholas Spittal: 8:55

Yeah, absolutely. And we've published some work in the last year on both feedback we've gotten through our ongoing surveys as well as the efforts and feedback that we've gotten through our formal communications and activities with our patient advisory council. And some of it is things you'd expect. Some of it's a little bit more nuanced and some of it is things you might not expect. So examples of that are we all know that payment for time and, and, and taking off work and arranging care is really important for participants in clinical studies. But interestingly I was really excited to learn that our advisory council's primary feedback on their reasons for participation was altruistic. It's about advancing science and being part of bringing new therapies to life. And as an example of that, they really emphasize that that using action statements in how we recruit and how we talk about research like helping mankind or contribute to society were the types of language that they really preferred. And I think that's meaningful both in how we think of a patient community, but also how we tailor our outreach to patients that might participate in future studies. One of the surprising things that I took away from some of the feedback we've gotten from the patient advisory council,particularly When you think about what's happened with research over the last couple of years is actually preference for in clinic visits. So you think about what's happened during the pandemic over the last couple of years. And in some ways, maybe it's because of the pandemic, but patients really value that in person care that they're getting from a physician and from a research staff when they go into the clinic. And certainly for ongoing just safety check ins, there's always a phone call or, some sort of follow up in that way that works perfectly well. But when they're on treatment or have the opportunity to come into the clinic as long as that can be arranged at a time that works well for them, that actually in many cases is the preference to come and be able to be face to face with their physician and when their caregivers. And then, one other thing. Is that you know, I mentioned that we're deploying a lot of technology, and one of the reasons that we're doing that is that patients have indicated to us from from prior experience that their first preference on how they get outreach from it from a new study or an appointment reminder that they prefer to receive that via text message. So, yes, we can deploy multi modality ways of reminding patients of upcoming visits or offer a new clinical study. But knowing that that's the first preferred message approach for most patients is allowing us to really think about how are we continuing with our ongoing updates to participants that have worked with us in the past, as well as outreach to bring trials to new patients as well.

Jimmy Bechtel: 11:34

Thanks again, Nick. I would love to dive into each one of those different insights you gained. I realized that's not what we're here to talk about today. So maybe on a future podcast, we can tease some of those learnings out, but I did want to mention that it is so interesting that you had so many patients that preferred those in person visits. That's a message that we perpetuate out to our audience quite a bit is. You know, there are a lot of patients that do want to come in or feel the need to come in to conduct their clinical research visits. So it's important for our sponsor and CRO and service provider partners to understand that despite having so much road behind us when it comes to technology implementation on our clinical trials, that we need to make sure that we consider that. And really what that boils down to is optionality for patients. They want to come in. Let's do it. If they don't, let's facilitate that. But again, conversation maybe for another time. Because I would like to shift gears over to you, Pat, and, and ask you as the sponsor, why is it important for a companies like Sanofi to encourage patient centricity among your site partners? And maybe share a little bit of what you've done specifically beyond this award. I think this award is, is one key way, but beyond this award, that's helped further this mission and focus on again, patient centricity.

Patricia Roselle: 12:53

Yeah, thanks, Jimmy. So while we have been working in a patient centric approach for many years, we've actually developed a foundational shift from patient centricity to what we are calling integrated patient engagement. And this really is a shift from patient centric to patient centric. We feel defines and in a more a broader and perhaps a descriptive way. What, what does that mean? And it really means, integrating the patient, the caregiver, whomever, every step of the way from early development through launch to access and. We're taking a step to demonstrate and make ourselves accountable. We launched last year, I want to say probably sometime over the summer what we call the Sanofi Patient Community Charter. And we are referring to this really as our North. And this is not just R and D, but really, as I was mentioning across life cycle management, it's endorsed and supported by our executives, as well as our corporate social responsibility teams, public affairs, patient advocacy, and basically it's It's an external outward facing communication where we are committing every year to report out on metrics that matter in terms of how are we committing to ensuring that patients are at the center of everything we do so that is reflected in the fact that we have patients. Informed 100 percent of our phase two and phase three studies. And,, in listening to Nick talk about the patient advisory council, this is really the same model that we implement here, whether it's through interviews or patient panels or surveys or what have you. To ensure that we are designing our trials that allow for the most inclusivity, we reduce the burden for people to participate. We identify outcomes, endpoints that are most meaningful for patients and that we include the people in our trials who ultimately will look like the people potentially taking our medications when all is said and done. And so it would, it became very obvious our synergies between velocity and Sanofi were so incredibly well aligned. From what Nick had touched on the diversity and inclusion element. And right now we do have site locations and multiple diverse cities that velocity is supporting and they're placed at these sites because they are reflective of the prevalence of these conditions in diverse communities. And so that's really important for us and for this partnering opportunity. Nick also talked about, you know, digital technology and how digital technology Allows for that flexibility. I like the phrase that Nick said. It's a tailored outreach and that also is reflective of, again, putting the patient first at what works for them. And so. It it was absolutely very clear that as a sponsor and as a site that we are completely aligned and synergistic in how we approach patients and patient centricity.

Jimmy Bechtel: 16:09

Well, thank you, Pat. Thanks for that explanation. It is obvious to me, and I hope obvious to our listeners as well, that there was a, there's clear consistency amongst what you're doing as an organization and what organizations like Velocity have done to. advance some of the work that we clearly need to do as it pertains to clinical trials, particularly in that centricity and our emphasis and focus in diversity. So it's great to see that those things align so closely. And it's, I think, a word to our other sites on the line that if. If you're wanting to deepen your relationships with your sponsors and CROs, take a look at what they're trying to do in the form of patient centricity and patient focus, and see how your goals and programs and missions align and I think vice versa as well. Make sure that as a sponsor and CRO representative that you look at the sites and see what they're doing to be patient centric and see what we can do to synergize those as we've obviously been able to emphasize and point out today on our call between Sanofi and Velocity. So it's great to hear that Pat, I'll continue with you as we begin to wrap our conversation up here. Looking ahead what are some of your initiatives and goals that you have for ensuring patient centricity and community engagement going forward?

Patricia Roselle: 17:26

So I will say it was. It was really fantastic that towards the end of last year, we had a joint meeting with Velocity and the Velocity core staff as well as Sanofi. And we looked at how can we partner moving forward, looking at really what are the most innovative and integrated approaches To include the community because we realize really how important sense of community is. And how do we really build the foundation to support patients, families, caregivers? So it includes the community. It includes the sites. It includes the patients. Obviously, it includes the sponsors. And one area that we work very closely with our patient advocacy groups as well. And that's something that we, as both organizations are identifying these focus areas and appointing leads to collaborate across our organizations. So I'm really excited about the opportunities that we'll be creating together with velocity.

Jimmy Bechtel: 18:32

It sounds wonderful, Pat, and I couldn't agree more. It will be great to see those progress. Nick, I do want to turn it over to you as well. What is the future for the work that you're doing at Velocity in terms of patient centricity?

Nicholas Spittal: 18:45

Yeah, Jimmy, well certainly we're proud and excited by earning this award last year, but we're not resting on our laurels and making sure that we keep advancing both with our own innovations and listening to what patients have to say. So. Late last year, and we recently just announced we initiated our own patient app that's called Vision Engage, and that is available on on the app stores. And we've already got over 40, 000 patients that are using that app to go in and self review possible clinical studies that might be close to them and that they would potentially qualify for. They're actually able to prescreen within that app and go all the way through the process of Scheduling into one of our sites, so we've integrated that with our full site operations, and then this year will be adding other capabilities to that, including Spanish language, Polish and German language as well, and launching that outside of the U. S. And using the app as our primary payment source. So, currently patients need to come to the clinic and when they're getting a patient stipend, they either have to get a card or they might have had a card from a prior study so they've got multiple cards. And so we've centralized all of that process and are using that as a As a direct enhancement in how we're we're able to engage with our patients. And, I think you're going to see a lot more of advances in what we're doing with, with technology, but also, you know, Pat mentioned that word community. We don't want to lose sight of, of that being a big part of of what this is all about and knowing that we get feedback on the importance of that, that local touch. We're also putting recruitment staff that are supporting our sites out into the communities, doing live events. We do a lot of health care screenings. We are about to start another screening type where we're actually going out into the community doing cognitive assessments as a, as a free health health screening that patients can engage with us and learn more about research, but also get some good health information that they can use in their own decision making, whether that's a clinical study or to take back to their physicians. So that we already do that with diabetes screenings and liver biopsies, fiber scans for patients that might have liver disease. So we're always looking for new ways that we can add value into the health care ecosphere with that ongoing care opportunity.

Jimmy Bechtel: 21:02

Excellent, Nick. It sounds like you all are again, like you said, not resting on your laurels. That app sounds really, really great. And I, I hope other individuals and organizations take inspiration from the continued progress that you make in terms of focusing so heavily on patient centricity. I realize it's not a, as, as straightforward of a capability for everyone. But again, inspiration and drive, I think, can go a long way. And I hope others take note of what you're doing and can find their own unique ways to bring patient centricity to the forefront of the work that they do as so many of the sites already. have done. Well, Pat, Nick it was great to talk with you and learn a little bit more about what each of your organizations are doing and how it synergized so nicely into the patient centricity award that velocity was the recipient of this year. Thank you again for being here with us today and it was great to talk with both of you.

Patricia Roselle: 21:59

Thank you, Jimmy. It was truly my pleasure and honor to celebrate Nick and Velocity, and Nick, I look forward to our continued collaborations across many different levels and initiatives this year.

Nicholas Spittal: 22:13

Absolutely, Pat. You and the Sanofi team have been great partners, not just with this award, but also our ongoing work. So we appreciate the recognition, but know there's a lot still ahead for us together, and lots of good work that we can do. Pat.

Jimmy Bechtel: 22:26

Thank you. Thanks again, both. For all of you listening. Make sure that you register for upcoming summits like the global site solutions summit by visiting the summit page on our website myscrs dot org. You can also use that page as an opportunity to submit your site or nominate another for the Excellence in Patient Centricity Award and many other awards that we give out during that summit and throughout the year. While you're on our website, I want to also encourage you to check out other SCRS publications and resources built for our community in the publications and resources section of that same website. We appreciate your participation in listening to today's program and look forward to having you join us for more great content coming out very soon. Thanks again for listening.