CASE STUDY

Clinical trial optimization at protocol design

N-SIDE clinical supply experts collaborated with the Clinical Supply team at EMD Serono to optimize the trial design stage in an important oncological trial program. In this Case Study, you’ll learn how the project exceeded targets for waste reduction and cost savings, all while ensuring patients were kept at the heart of trial design.

logolockup_n-side_us

 

money cut icon
€18m

Achieved €18 million in total sourcing cost savings

arrow up icon
10 months

Accelerated recruitment by 10 months

waste icon
40%

Decreased drug waste by over 40%

Enabling fact-based protocol design

Optimizing early, during clinical trial design, presents an important opportunity for companies to reduce drug waste and cost, as well as accelerate timelines. At N-SIDE, we take into account every aspect of a clinical trial design to provide our customers with the data to make informed decisions. 

When developing the clinical protocols for three oncological trials within a strategic clinical program, EMD Serono contacted N-SIDE to assist with their trial optimization.

With the identified goals of reducing both waste and budget for these complex trials, the N-SIDE team collaborated with the Clinical Supply team at EMD Serono to compare multiple scenarios using innovative approaches. N-SIDE’s Supply App was used to optimize the trial protocols and provide factual support for decision-making.

With the results from N-SIDE, the Clinical Supply team at EMD Serono was able to make fact-based decisions that enabled the project to exceed targets for waste reduction and cost savings, all while ensuring patients were kept at the heart of the trial designs.

About the Company

Merck is a leading science and technology company which operates across healthcare, life science and electronics. Around 58,000 employees work to make a positive difference to millions of people’s lives every day by creating more joyful and sustainable ways to live. From advancing gene editing technologies and discovering unique ways to treat the most challenging diseases to enabling the intelligence of devices – the company is everywhere.

Related resources

placeholder-1

Title lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur

Lorem ipsum

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

Lorem ipsum
placeholder-1

Title lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur

Lorem ipsum

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

Lorem ipsum
placeholder-1

Title lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur

Lorem ipsum

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

Lorem ipsum

Areas of improvement across trial design

plan icon orange-1 Kit design

The optimal kit design for a trial cannot be identified in isolation, and must take into account overall trial design, constraints and risk. N-SIDE clinical supply experts used the Supply App to assess the kit design possibilities for the three trials, resulting in a 24% reduction in material cost and 41% reduction in waste.

Calendar icon Visit intervals

Having the facts about the impact of adjustments to the visit window allowed for clear assessment and early collaboration between the Clinical Trial Supply and Clinical Teams at EMD Serono. This led to a €1.8m cost savings without impacting the patient centricity of the trial.

planning icon-1 IRT optimization and trial design

This particular clinical trial had an open-label comparator treatment arm and very high comparator sourcing costs. N-SIDE experts identified the opportunity to optimize the trial design and IRT settings together in order to avoid static buffers for the comparator, which led to an impressive €18m in cost savings.

time blue icon Time-to-market efficiencies

N-SIDE experts tested the impact of accelerating the trial recruitment period. With these results, the EMD Serono Clinical Trial Supply team was able to avoid all supply chain bottlenecks and achieved a 10 month acceleration in recruitment, while only needing to increase production by 12%.

Ready to optimize your clinical trial supply chain?

Contact us to learn how our solutions can help you manage your clinical trials and programs.

Request Info