GI Alliance recently struck a partnership with healthcare technology company Iterative Health to expand the company’s clinical research footprint.
Key to this partnership is putting physicians in charge. Casey Chapman, chief medical officer of GI Alliance, joined Becker’s to discuss what happens when physicians are not in charge of clinical research.
What are the potential dangers when physicians are not at the helm of clinical research?
Dr. Casey Chapman: One of the things I’ve said many times — after learning many ways of doing things the wrong way — is that how we decide on research and what type of research we pursue should really be based on three things.
Number one: the patient population. We have to stay focused on where the need is.
Number two: physician passion or engagement. In other words, where do you feel compelled to do research based on patient need?
Number three: budget. Too often, I’ve seen physician sites or research organizations choose clinical trials based on potential financial gain from patient enrollment. And I’ll tell you, it happens, and it still happens. But if you’re not enrolling patients, you’re not serving the population in need. That’s time wasted. Time that could have been spent helping patients.
If we lose focus on our goal — better patient care — and let finances drive decisions, we see the same pattern again and again: groups focusing more on how many trials they can get contracts for, pushing those to different sites, and driving budgets up. Look, you have to make money to run a business, no doubt. I agree you can’t keep the lights on without revenue. But when that mission fades, you lose physician buy-in. And if you lose physician buy-in, you won’t have a successful mission, especially in research.
