Wow… 2020 has been a year of adaptation on a level that none of us could have predicted. As we celebrated last New Year’s Eve with the excitement of what 2020 would bring, none of us knew what we were in for!
But here we are, proving that we are even more resilient than we ever thought we were. I am sure we all had thoughts in April/May of “are we going to get through this?”, and yet we have! But what is even more interesting is that, in many cases, I think we have thrived! This has been a time to tap into innovation and adaptation to find new, different, and better ways to get things done.
I am excited about how we will have grown when we are fully on the other side of this pandemic. I think that not only will we be able to reflect on our own businesses and see vast process improvements, increased efficiencies, and innovative new tools that will ultimately make us much more profitable; but we will be able to see industry-wide changes that are going to transform how research gets done permanently.
Perhaps we could even say that Covid-19 was the kick in the rear that we all needed to accelerate long-overdue changes. The paperless systems that we are all scared to adopt are now being adopted almost as a new standard. The acceptance of these systems by Sponsors and CROs is widespread, with a wonderful side effect of actually loving how these systems provide for greater oversight, risk-based monitoring, reduced monitoring costs at least as it relates to travel, and more. Sites are finding that these systems allow for more efficient data collection, regulatory processes, investigator oversight, staff communication, remote operations, and improved data and process quality control.
It’s almost sad to think that it took a global pandemic to make our industry innovate and transition into systems that were already readily available that were waiting to provide the value that we are all experiencing only months later. Still, perhaps we can be happy that we have come this far and hope that we have learned from the experience. Maybe now we will all seek these opportunities to adopt technology and innovation faster and more openly.
RealTime is not going to stop innovating. We will continue to look into the future and build systems that will help us get there. We will be listening to our customers today and customers to-be to understand their challenges, and we will be here to solve them.
While 2020 has been a crazy year and emotions have been high, perhaps there are at least a few reasons to appreciate what we are working to overcome and how much stronger we will be when it is over.
Here’s to 2020!
Rick Greenfield, CEO
