UC BRAID, the consortium of the five Clinical and Translational Science Award campuses in the University of California system, convened the first-ever Clinical Research Summit at the UC Irvine campus on October 15th and 16th. Bringing together approximately 140 clinical research professionals from all five CTSA campuses, the Summit offered attendees multiple opportunities for learning, networking, and sharing of best practices. The goal of the event was to leverage the extensive expertise among UC’s clinical research workforce to encourage collaboration and promote collective solutions to common barriers facing clinical and translational science research. The event also provided a low-cost opportunity for professional development to all levels of clinical research staff and encouraged attendees to view clinical research support as a lifelong career.

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The Clinical Research Summit offered plenary sessions covering emerging issues in clinical research, including artificial intelligence (AI) in clinical and translational research, advances in single IRB reliance, challenges in digital health research, privacy, and innovative tools for supporting clinical research. Breakout tracks included Contracting, Regulatory, and Operations, covering such topics as study start-up and third-party/vendor agreements, accelerated clinical trial activation, protecting research from bots, new policies around reproductive health, and clinical trial overhead and pass-through costs benchmarking. The Operations track also covered topics such as the CPRC billing interface between electronic health record systems and clinical trials management systems, research participant compensation and reimbursement practices, and innovative approaches to clinical trial workforce attraction, career development, and retention.

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Evaluation of the event suggests that attendees were very satisfied with the content and opportunities for networking and collaboration and are enthusiastic about making it an annual event. Several systemwide workgroups will be formed in response to discussions from the event and will focus on developing practical solutions to specific areas of clinical research support that are especially challenging for multisite clinical trials. UC BRAID will host and facilitate those workgroups as part of its mission to accelerate clinical and translational research and support new ways of working together to solve administrative barriers to clinical research.

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We are pleased to announce that the second UC BRAID Clinical Research Summit will be next year on October 14-15, 2025, also at the Cove at UC Irvine. More details to follow.

 

For more information about the 2024 Summit, or to get on the contact list for 2025, please email:
    - Eric Mah, UCSD
    - Elizabeth Boyd, UC BRAID

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