Through three decades in clinical research, I've witnessed the evolution of technologies aimed at streamlining site operations and giving sponsors oversight. Today, I’m excited about the promise of IQVIA's One Home for Sites platform in addressing one of our industry's most persistent challenges: the overwhelming proliferation and fragmentation of clinical trial systems that sites must navigate daily.

My message to clinical technology vendors and pharmaceutical sponsors is emphatic: We need you to join One Home for Sites to fulfill its promise of single sign-on and simplified access to everything we need to run our trials.

Change is overdue

As someone who ventured into clinical research from a background in mental health counseling and hospital administration, I've experienced firsthand how technology can either enhance or hinder patient care. In my current role at CNS Healthcare, where we initiate approximately 100 new trials annually, our research staff regularly juggle access to 15-17 different vendors for each study. This translates to interacting with between 1,000 and 1,500 distinct system each year. Managing multiple vendor platforms, each with their own login credentials and training protocols, creates an enormous administrative burden for my staff. They put in many extra hours to conquer the technology and make sure that none of it negatively impacts the patients and participants we care for.

The traditional approach, requiring separate logins for each vendor or system, has made a challenging and fragmented environment, demanding time and resources. A solution that integrates many systems into a single sign-on platform has been needed for years —and we were thrilled to see that solution arrive with IQVIA One Home for Sites.

One Home is not just another system

Our journey with One Home began at the Society for Clinical Research Sites (SCRS) West tech conference in June 2024. The platform presentation immediately resonated with our team's daily challenges. The solution stood out because it offered something fundamentally different—not just another system to add to our existing stack, but a true integration platform that could potentially transform how we manage our research operations.

What stood out to us was IQVIA's commitment to collaboration. During feedback sessions that they scheduled with us in August 2024, the product team demonstrated a remarkable willingness to incorporate site feedback, implementing several of our suggestions to enhance functionality. This level of responsiveness is rare in an industry where solutions are often developed without direct input from the people who use them daily.

The potential for One Home to be the SSO platform for which sites have been asking is high. The user interface is simple, direct, intuitive and easy to navigate, requiring minimal training for our team. We’ve seen staff using One Home whenever possible to manage access and take advantage of the growing SSO System Library. Within our site locations, we have examples of principle investigators and clinical research coordinators experimenting with adding and sharing tasks, and they like the functionality.

Empowering clinicians and minimizing stress

At CNS Healthcare, we hire clinicians for their medical expertise, not their proficiency with IT systems. By reducing the complexity of accessing many vendor platforms, One Home will allow healthcare professionals to focus on what they do best: providing high-quality care to patients. This will significantly lower stress levels among our staff, especially those who are less comfortable with technology.

As we integrate One Home into our operations, we see the platform’s potential. The ongoing expansion of its vendor network will enable efficiency gains and operational enhancements. By incorporating widely used IRT, eReg and training platforms, One Home will become an essential tool for research sites across the world.

Let’s get to critical mass

We're currently at a crucial juncture in One Home's evolution. While the platform's foundation is solid and promising, its full potential is dependent on sponsor and vendor participation. Currently, my site users can access up to 25 IQVIA and third-party products through One Home, including some widely used products like Medidata Rave, Clario, and Signant. While the pace of adoption is strong, it represents only a fraction of the technology ecosystem that sites must navigate. For the platform to truly transform site operations, we need broader industry participation from vendors and sponsors.

The challenge isn't about technology – it's about the willingness to collaborate. Getting stakeholders to work together in our traditionally siloed industry isn't easy, but it's essential. Many vendors and sponsors have a competitive mindset historically and may believe they’ll be giving up control; but as the CEO of a successful site network, I ask you to think differently. If you truly care about site satisfaction and getting more trials conducted more quickly, then the benefits of participation far outweigh any perceived risks. The vendors and sponsors that join early are positioning themselves as champions of site efficiency and demonstrating their commitment to reducing site burden.

For research sites that haven’t registered for One Home yet, we emphasize that this is not just another system to learn—it is a transformative tool that gives you the single sign-on we’ve all been asking for. The platform is already delivering value with current integrations, and that value will only increase as more vendors participate.

The path forward is clear: we need sponsors and tech providers to embrace this collaborative approach to technology integration. As sites, we can help drive this change by registering for One Home – it’s fast, easy and free.

Try it out. Then give IQVIA Technologies your feedback directly in the system. They are listening and responding. The potential impact on site efficiency and, by extension, clinical research as a whole, is too significant to ignore.