Ashley Davidson, vice president of sponsor and tech strategy at Advarra, discusses her outlook for this year’s edition of the SCOPE summit.
The global market for clinical trials is expected to grow to over $106bn by 2032, but stakeholders in this industry face increasingly challenging obstacles, including regulatory hurdles, talent shortages and clinical studies becoming significantly larger, longer, and more complex.
Innovation in trial technology will be critical to tackle these challenges and accelerate clinical research. This will be a major point of discussion during the upcoming Summit for Clinical OPS Executives (SCOPE) 2025 taking place in Orlando, Florida, where stakeholders will gather to share the latest advances in clinical trial technology.
Advarra, a provider of clinical trial technology and services, will be one of many participants in SCOPE’s 16th edition, highlighting the role of technology in accelerating clinical trial outcomes.
Davidson joined the company last year to lead product strategy for technology solutions that not only support the sponsor’s goals but also enable collaboration between sites, sponsors, and contract research organizations (CROs).
What milestones has Advarra hit since the previous SCOPE event in 2024?
Advarra has been very busy since 2024’s SCOPE conference, including making strategic new executive hires in support of the company’s mission to bring clinical trial stakeholders together to improve research.
To that end, Advarra conducted a survey of sites, sponsors, and CROs that revealed three biggest barriers to stakeholder collaboration: communications, staffing, and technology, with only less than one-third of site respondents agreeing that sponsor/CRO technology solutions deliver the promised value for integration and efficiency.
One of the primary technology issues is simply the number of disconnected systems, each requiring their own login credentials. That’s why Advarra also launched a pivotal innovation for clinical trials – Single Sign-On (SSO) functionality. SSO allows sites to log in to any system using their own credentials, reducing operational inefficiencies, and increasing security. It has been widely adopted – we have had more than 1.5 million logins in the last nine months.
What will be the highlights of SCOPE for your team this year?
At SCOPE 2025, Advarra looks forward to continuing to foster a greater sense of community and collaboration with sites, sponsors, and CROs as well as other industry partners. SCOPE is a wonderful opportunity to engage with the full clinical research landscape in both informal conversations and through smart, insightful formal presentations.
I will be speaking in two sessions: On February 4, I will be presenting with Richard ‘Reb’ Buckley, director of site technology solutions at Immunovant, about the critical role of study startup technology for small to mid-size biopharma companies. I will also be presenting on February 5 with Fortrea’s global head of patient recruitment and engagement, Melissa Harris.
How do you see the coming year panning out for Advarra?
Advarra is doubling-down on its investment in modern technology to improve clinical trial operations, particularly in terms of study startup, a major pain point that often causes costly delays.
Launching a new study is notoriously time-consuming for all stakeholders, plus sites are on technology overload, as 55% report technology setup and training as ‘very burdensome,’ creating the biggest challenge among all startup activities.
Existing technology often creates roadblocks rather than alleviates issues. For instance, sponsors want technology that helps them proactively identify emerging issues in a clinical trial, but instead the lack of interoperability with other systems creates blind spots. Even vendors that claim they offer unified platforms only connect their own technologies and do not address the disconnected site and sponsor tools.
In 2025, Advarra will expand on its SSO technology to introduce pivotal technology solutions that focus on enabling seamless collaboration among all trial stakeholders to transform study startup.
