VirTrial Announces Service for Virtual Site Monitoring Visits to Allow CRA’s Continued Access to Research Sites During COVID-19 Pandemic


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With the current restriction on travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this option enables studies to proceed without delay and facilitates an expedited trial process for sponsors developing drugs to address the current global crisis.

VirTrial today announced a new service designed to enable virtual site monitoring visits in the clinical trials industry. The solution enables pharmaceutical sponsors and CROs to evaluate, qualify and routinely monitor research sites for studies without physical travel. The service is the industry’s first patent-pending virtual site monitoring solution.

Virtual Pre-Site includes delivery of HD live-streaming glasses that enable an on-site Clinical Research Coordinator (CRC) to provide a remote Clinical Research Associate (CRA) access to all aspects of the site virtually simply by walking through the site wearing the glasses. Everything in view of the study coordinator streams to the CRA’s computer screen so she/he can verify the site qualifies for, is trained for and is performing the study to protocol standards.

Virtual Pre-Site, which is powered by the VirTrial Virtual Care Management (VCM) platform, streamlines and standardizes the study startup and routine monitoring process while ensuring consistent information is being collected across all sites. Virtual Pre-Site’s secure, HIPAA-compliant platform enables the CRA to conduct video interviews with both the CRC and the PI to ensure they have the needed patients, appropriate experience, and time to conduct the study. By eliminating the need for CRAs to travel, Virtual Pre-Site reduces the time required for study monitoring and slashes associated time and costs.

“Pharmaceutical sponsors have shown intense interest in this solution due to its ability to cut costs and reduce the time required to evaluate and monitor research sites,” said Deric Frost, VP of Virtual Pre-Site. “With the current restriction on travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this option enables studies to proceed without delay and facilitates an expedited trial process for sponsors developing drugs to address the current global crisis.”

COVID-19 spurred a significant increase in Virtual Pre-Site inquiries to accommodate site monitoring for existing studies and to expedite study startups for COVID and other drug trials. Early adopters and innovative sponsors and CROs, however, recognized the value well before the pandemic.

“As a CRO in the vanguard of the movement towards decentralization and digitization of clinical research conduct, Biorasi was one of the first to recognize the value in the VirTrial Pre-Site model,” said Wayne Bowden, VP of Program Development at Biorasi. “Innovative approaches like these, which leverage the latest technologies, are what will continue to drive improvement in trial operations, not only in our current crisis but also well beyond it. These are the types of approaches that we are interested in, to continuously enable a better experience for our clients, and we are proud to be a partner with VirTrial in that mission.”

For more information on VirTrial’s Virtual Pre-Site service, visit http://www.virtualpresite.com.

About VirTrial

VirTrial is a bioscience technology company providing a stable, long-standing telemedicine platform to transform the clinical trial industry. The Virtual Care Management (VCM) program combines secure video, audio, chat and messaging allowing pharmaceutical companies and CROs to create patient centric Decentralized Clinical Trials (DCTs) by replacing some study visits with virtual visits. The vision is for 25-50% of visits to be conducted virtually creating a hybrid model. VirTrial apps and services are supported on any device (Android, Apple, tablet, phone, computer) and can be used by any site worldwide. They are hosted in a secure cloud-based environment and are HIPAA and GDPR compliant.

VirTrial enables greater accessibility to trials for patients, higher performance by clinical trial sites, and improved outcomes for pharmaceutical companies. Working together we can bring better medications to market more quickly.

To learn more about VirTrial, visit https://www.virtrial.com

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