Topography Health, the clinical research platform that provides infrastructure and support for practices and systems to conduct trials at scale, has officially published the results from its late 2024 survey, which focused on analyzing the clinical research experience of healthcare practices and systems.
According to certain reports, the stated survey took into account the opinions of S.-based healthcare CFOs, COOs, and administrators who are actively managing clinical research programs. These participants would go on to reveal that, while research remains a compelling way to boost physician engagement and drive revenue, the high costs and challenges associated with it mean that most of them would rather consider bringing a service partner to help build a successful program.
“It’s encouraging to see that many research ancillaries can in fact be profitable,” said Alexander Saint-Amand, CEO and co-founder, Topography Health. “But it’s clear they need support in key areas to build successful and scalable programs — the kind that can make a big impact on patient outcomes. So much of this hinges on the physicians, and fostering a joyful, meaningful research experience that they want to be a part of.”
Talk about the given results on a slightly deeper level, we begin from how practices and systems across the board are in need of more support to overcome the obstacles at hand. We say so because more than 60% of surveyed non-academic practice and system administrators said they would consider bringing on a service partner to enhance their program.
This is further contextualized by the respondents deeming staffing costs, start-up costs, and ongoing financial obstacles as major barriers to building research programs, even when physicians are highly engaged.
Next up, the survey in question reinforced importance of keeping physicians engaged at all times. Here, a larger chunk of respondents basically agreed that physician engagement is a core element for building and sustaining research programs. From that contingent, an estimated 75% highlighted how research positively impacts both patient satisfaction and physician retention.
Another major detail uncovered by Topography Health’s study is rooted in limited adoption of AI across the research space. You see, no more than 4% administrators reported actively using AI tools within their research programs, let alone AI-driven research services.
Rounding up highlights is a piece of data, which claims that research can actually be a profitable operation, with many practices and systems reporting some financial success, though not consistently. In essence, 75% of respondents stated that their research programs have been profitable at some point in the last 5 years. However, even when profitable, they’re unable to drive revenue repeatedly and reliably.
The development in question delivers an interesting follow-up to a report recently published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, named Advancing a National Infrastructure for Clinical Trials. This report basically called for a new trials infrastructure which can address the challenges that practices and systems face. To drive its point home, the report even touched upon how the challenging state of trial financing and organization is currently posing major obstacles to expanding trials.
Founded in 2020, Topography Health’s rise up the ranks stems from providing the essential infrastructure that medical practices and systems need to conduct trials at scale. The company’s solutions, on their part, can resolve key challenges in technology, operations, and leadership to let more doctors participate in research. Topography’s excellence can also be understood once you consider it currently works with practices and systems across 8 states and Washington, D.C. Furthermore, the company’s partners include 5 of the top 5 CROs and 25 of the top 50 biopharma companies. In fact, till date, Topography also has a 100% retention rate among its physician investigators.
“As a physician who runs a research program, these results don’t surprise me,” said Dr. Rajesh Jain, M.D. and Gastroenterologist, Rocky Mountain Gastroenterology. “Research can have a huge impact on our ability to provide state-of-the-art care to our patients and concurrently have a positive effect on a physician enjoying the practice of medicine, while staying on the cutting edge. To achieve this, physicians need a solid support structure so that we can concentrate on being physicians rather than administrators.”
