The Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI) Clinical research Innovation (CRI) steering committee developed a survey to address the size, cost, volume, and efficiency of cancer clinical trials offices (CTOs; JCO Oncol Pract. 2020;OP2000501. doi:10.1200/OP.20.00501).
CTOs are a centralized resource for clinical trial conduct and support the investigation of cancer prevention, early detection, and treatment at cancer centers across North America. Research staff are experts in finance, regulatory, clinical, and data operations but no data sets exist to analyze the functionality of the offices.
“The objective of AACI and the CRI steering committee was to develop and widely disseminate a benchmarking survey to allow centers to compare their performance and use the data to promote efficient clinical research operations,” explained the study authors.
Researchers developed an 11-question survey to address the CTO budget, accrual and trial volume, full-time equivalents (FTEs), staff turnover, and activation timelines.
The response rate to the survey was high and reported annual CTO budgets ranging from $250,000 to $23,900,000 with a median of $8.2 million. The centers reported 55,573 accruals to 27,493 trials over a 12-month period. The number of FTE workers housed within the CTOs ranged from 4.5 to 811 with a median of 104. The survey also reported a median activation time of 167 days.
“These data will allow cancer centers to evaluate their CTO infrastructure, funding, portfolio, and/or accrual goals as compared with peers,” concluded the study authors. “A wide range in each of the outcomes was noted, in keeping with the wide variation in size and scope of cancer center CTOs across the United States and Canada.”—Lisa Kuhns
