SCRS Talks

What does it actually mean to be a sponsor of choice? In this episode, Jimmy Bechtel sits down with Carrie Lewis and Suzy Montanye from Keenova to find out. The two share how the newly formed company, born from the merger of Mallinckrodt and Endo, is building a site partnership model grounded in accountability, transparency, and real feedback. From their site operational advisory board to a dedicated site relationship manager role, Keenova is making the case that mid-sized sponsors can operate like industry leaders.

Jimmy Bechtel sits down with John Worden, Chief Commercial Officer at Javara, to explore how AI-driven data analysis is moving clinical research and patient care away from one-size-fits-all medicine toward truly personalized treatment pathways. They discuss how embedded research sites inside healthcare systems are uniquely positioned to put these tools to work, what end-to-end data integration means for feasibility, patient identification, and long-term outcomes, and why scaling AI in healthcare is ultimately less of a technology problem and more of a trust and collaboration problem. John also shares a real-world example of how the research process led to a life-changing diagnosis for a patient who almost slipped through the cracks.

Jimmy Bechtel sits down with Dr. Anastasia Christianson, former senior innovation leader at Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, to talk about what a real AI strategy actually looks like in clinical research. They dig into why isolated pilots fall short, how to think about AI as a process change rather than a tool add-on, and where the biggest missed opportunities are right now. Dr. Christianson also shares her take on navigating evolving regulations and paints a picture of where clinical trials are headed over the next three to five years, including a future where no trial launches without first being simulated end to end.

Every site absorbs costs that never show up in a budget. Coordinator overtime, screen failures, startup inefficiencies, technology burden — these aren't edge cases, they're everyday realities. And over time, they're what push good investigators out of research for good. Lauren Stockwell sits down with Mike Pierre, Project Manager at SCRS, to talk about the Hidden Costs Workshop, why it was created, and what sites, sponsors, and CROs actually walk away with after four hours in that room together. If you have ever struggled to justify a budget line or wondered why your numbers never seem to add up, this one is for you.

Jimmy Bechtel sits down with Kristen Bosse, VP of Product Development at CRIO, and Samir Jain, VP of Product Management at Medidata, to talk about a collaboration that has been a long time coming. Together they break down why eSource to EDC integration has historically been out of reach for dedicated research sites, what has made it so hard to do at scale, and how their joint solution is changing that. They also get into what sites actually gain when manual data transcription is taken off their plate and what the path to getting started looks like for sites running CRIO on Rave today.