Transcription
Hello and welcome to Note to File, a clinical research podcast. A collection of interviews, candid commentary, and general nonsense for the clinical research community. Check us out at notetofilepodcast.com. And now, without further ado, on to the show.
[Music]
Hey guys, what's up? It's um July 24th. Welcome to another note to file. How's it going, Denali?
It's going decent. Busy week, but hanging in there. What about you?
Oh man, it's always a busy week. It feels like an extra long week. I've been sick half the week or more or less, I guess. But, uh, nothing better than a summer cold.
I was going to say summer colds suck. It's not ideal. Today, however, is National Tequila Day. Not mad at that. I'm celebrating since this morning. It's going to be a riot of a sticky notes. I feel like that should have been a Tuesday. Like like a taco Tuesday. Tequila Tuesday. Like taco Tuesday is Tequila Tuesday, you know? Like I feel like the Tuesday is like the Mexican food celebration day. The Mexican food celebration day. The Mexican food meal celebration.
Exactly. Exactly. Perfect. I don't know. Never been a tequila drinker. This stuff's gross to me.
So, I didn't used to be, and I think that's probably because I worked at a TexMax restaurant when I was in high school and probably drank significantly more margaritas than I should have that were probably not the best of qualities. But I think actually, and I know this is like something that like every douchebag says, but like, no, you just need a really good quality one and you'd like it. And I feel but I feel like that's not necessarily dis like not true. True. So my aunt and uncle used to live in Austin and like their neighbor owned some like agave farm tequila distillery. I don't know the correct terminology here. Um and so like they would have really good tequilas and I think that was the first time I was like oh I'm not I'm not mad at that. So I think maybe it does matter. Although also I think it depends on how you drink it too. There was you know like do you do salt and lime? If you do cinnamon and orange, so instead of salt, use cinnamon. Instead of lime, use orange. It's It's really good.
It sounds terrible.
It's delicious. It tastes like Christmas.
Yeah. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but you um you live in Wisconsin, so I have to trust defer to you on all things alcohol related.
That is something we are quite known for. It's true. It's true. Okay. Very good. Well, probably no tequila for me today, but if you're if you celebrate, be careful out there, you know. Hydrate.
That's right. That's right. Stay hydrated.
So, um I mean, is this the first time we're doing like a two a week? Uh like a regular. I mean, I know next week we only have one because we're just going to have a single one on Wednesday, but then I think moving forward we really do we're sticking to, you know, two a week, so we'll do a sticky notes every week. Um so, sorry folks.
Yeah. Well, all you got to do is not watch. There you go. Pretty easy. Easy. I'd recommend it.
Yeah. Well, I ideally you'll be seeing us twice a week with one interview and one sort of short sticky note. Uh depending on how lazy we are or how much we have our stuff together. I feel like coming into we're coming into like a traveling season. So, it'll be interesting.
Yeah. There's going to be a lot of conferences, a lot of stuff. Yeah. Going on. We'll see how it goes. We'll see how it goes.
Cool guys, the sticky notes. So, got comments? Let's hear them. Maybe we'll address them if they're fun and interesting. Um, so yeah, let's just get started. I mean, I What do we got today?
I don't know. I haven't seen a lot of like insanely interesting things lately. Um, but I will say a couple things this week did catch my eye. Um, the first, let me if I can figure out how to get my screen shared. Uh the first thing I thought was interesting is um an announcement of a partnership between Velocity Clinical Research and Palunteer. Um, which I first was like when I looked at it I was like that's a typo. Well I was like that Palunteer like is there like another company called Palunteer? You know it's not the most creative industry in the world. So like maybe uh somebody copied a name or I don't know what but no sure enough it's uh it's that palunteer and uh so I didn't look into this at all but what are they what's what are they saying their partnership is even about?
Um, so apparently it's around uh site finances and particularly I guess uh payment reconciliation. This is an article from Yahoo Finance. Um, which I guess is a place where you would put this article. Um, Velocity is not like a publicly traded company or anything, but I guess Palanteer is. There's a lot of eyes on them and they're, you know, the stock on their stock and whatnot.
Yeah, there's a lot of eyes on them because they're doing a lot of things. They got a lot of eyes on us. Uh, well, we'll get we'll get to that. But um, yeah, I guess you know they're talking about reconciling invoices um and potentially using I guess automating potentially some of reconciliation and uh, you know, it's a lot of vague stuff about yeah okay we're going to use it for finance. Um, again not a lot of depth necessarily to this announcement. They're going to do something in terms automating AR.
I mean, to be fair, I feel like every single partnership announcement I've read is equally as fake, right?
Yeah. It's like we're going to partner and do good things. Well, and they probably don't know exactly what they're going to do yet. I mean, obviously, I think there's a need for, you know, figuring some of this stuff out. I mean, I don't uh blame them for wanting to do that. Feels like a weird partner um to choose probably.
Um, I don't know how much you know about here. I like peripherally have heard about them which is why when this sort of came up I was I said I had similar response. I was like oh that's what is this about like what is what's happening here? Cuz I just I had not heard of Palenteer in anything in regards to the clinical trial space or this. So I've only heard of them in some of the other areas that I think they've been recently tagged in. So I was a little confused but I didn't know a ton about it.
Um, yeah, and I'll just say, you know, all this stuff is obviously very subjective and you can have whatever opinions you want about it. Um, I would recommend, you know, maybe you just read up about Palunteer. There's a lot of articles out there. Um, you know, this one's from April, but you know, they're fairly controversial company, I would say, if you're into caring about, you know, things in general, like your, you know, humanity, your privacy. And again, maybe maybe some of this depends on your political affiliation. I'm not entirely sure. Um, this is just one article. I'm sure it's whatever. It's biased. Maybe it's fake news. do your own research, but you know there's enough stuff out there uh about how you know Palunteers contributed to a lot of like surveillance I mean to both domestic and foreign how they've you know helped some foreign governments with you know the targeted killing of their enemies and again maybe some of this is uh depends on your particular political bias I still think it's a weird weird company to decide to align yourself with as a website.
What are they doing with ice? I keep seeing ice coming up here.
Yeah, this one's about ice. I think that they're um helping some of this has to do with like surveillance. So, I think they do a lot of facial recognition so they can help identify, you know, potentially I guess enemies of the state if you will, if you want to call them that. Um, I don't know, agree into it. I don't.
And then, you know, I don't want to editorialize too much. And maybe, you know, maybe I'm being
Yeah, you do. That's what we do. I do, but I'm not probably not going to. I would just, again, I find it curious. And then you get into like, you know, Peter Teal, you know, one of the co-founders. I think he still owns like the second highest amount of the company behind the Vanguard group. Um, read about Peter Teal. You know, I know a lot of people might know him from he wrote zero to one, which I know is sort of a startup techbro bible. The guy also has written pretty extensively about how he doesn't believe that democracy and capitalism can coexist. And if you could take a wild guess as to which one he prefers, um, you know, he is a billionaire. So, I don't know, just something I jumps to my mind. Maybe I'm going down too many rabbit holes. Maybe I should just be happy that trying to trying to fix patient or trying to fix site payments.
Well, I think that's like I mean some of this stuff my personal views on some of this stuff aside which I think is probably fairly evident if anyone looks at anything I post ever. Um, but I think it's fascinating. I just don't understand like maybe they're trying to diversify as a business. I don't know like what's what's the play here? like what is
I mean I I think there's a and again I know uh I see expander on people's like profiles on LinkedIn so I'm sure someone can chime in with this and read up certainly read up some more but I do think you know some part of their business model is based on AI automation and things like this and in a more uh let's say harmless sense so they probably do plenty of stuff that's not you know weirdly um oppressive and danger dangerous things. But again, that's merely my own personal opinion. So, just hope they don't conflate the two because that wouldn't be so great for like, you know, dei patient recruitment efforts if all of a sudden hopefully I don't get access to your patient database then, you know, who knows who who gets flagged.
Oh, yeah. I don't want see this is I can't I can't go down because it just starts to get too silly. Anyways, I thought it was really interesting. Um, I guess we'll see what comes of it uh if anything. Um, and um, again, a little perplexing, but maybe I'm just uh, I'm thinking too much about it. I don't know. I guess we'll see.
Yeah. More to come, I guess. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaking of, you know, I know Palunteer has gotten a lot of eyes on it, too, because of their like big jump in uh, their their stock or I don't know last six months, year, I don't know, something fiscal performance.
Yeah. Which is all that matters really. Well, we didn't we just decide that democracy doesn't matter? It's it's been it's been said.
So, yeah, speaking of stock uh performance, um, you know, I saw from uh our good good pal Joel White, who you know, does a really good job of kind of covering a lot of the financial stuff going on in our sector. um, you know, big bumps uh in some of the I think this was actually from this particular screen grab was from like some trading after hours uh after earnings from a couple you know I'm not sure who's put their earnings out versus who still is left to but either way we're seeing you know a big big pump in some of these CRO stocks um
I'm not going to pretend like I know anything about the stock market frankly uh Um cuz I don't it seems extremely irrational to me. Um, I thought it was interesting. Joel was the only one who posted about it. I feel like the sentiment a lot of the sentiment on LinkedIn was sort of like yay woohoo like which you know great that is true. It is it's nice. It's great for these companies. Is it a signal that we're sort of in a rebound? Uh are things better? I didn't dig in enough to sort of determine like why these I mean a 50% jump in medface seems like there's no news that justifies a 50% increase. Um, like no tangible news.
Um, I think maybe they had you know they beat earnings they had a higher book to bill. I know all these companies been laying people off like insane.
Well, that's what I was going to ask. Like I mean like there's a couple ways you can make your like you can increase your stock values, right? Like some of them doesn't necessarily mean the industry is rebounding necessarily. I would So are we seeing other types of organizations that are seeing similar bumps? Did you do you see anything like that?
I haven't I haven't looked into any of it. Um, no, it's a good question. I didn't look to because I guess you would I mean this is only like potentially downstream I guess.
Well, it also assumes I know like Ivia has like a whole tech business, right? So, like it might not be what portion of their business is is could it be attributed? But it's weird that it's all of them though, which would lead you to believe there's a wider industry impact. But yeah, I didn't go look at uh the Fisers or whoever like the big G7s or any of those like
Yeah. Are they all out there saying this to you? I don't know. Hopefully uh you know, some of you guys made some money out there if nothing else. But I thought it was funny. I like to sort of compare these things. I feel like the sentiment on LinkedIn was sort of like great it's finally okay we're finally seeing some turnaround. And then like if you go over to there's a couple posts on Reddit about it which made me laugh that are like a little bit the opposite sentiment of like great so we're all you know going to get our bonuses now and you're going to stop firing people or that like you know there's no significant news or changes to the sector.
Um, you know, uh, I saw something in here too about like, you know, these are not reflections on the quality or efficiency necessarily, anything real. It just happens to be some always, which I guess is always true, right? I mean, a lot of irrationality in the stock market, right? Like is this related to anything tangible or just some type of run on something that triggered this for no real rational reason?
But it is funny. I mean, you took picked the two platforms that are like polar opposite. Like Reddit is everyone's dirty laundry is out to bear and now like everyone is just ripping on everyone. And then LinkedIn is the opposite where it's this just giant self- congratulatory like pool of like so excited, thrilled to announce like it's just funny to see like is there a is there a more neutral platform like where it's like real?
Good question. I I mean I doubt you're gonna find that online period because online just is not real life. You know, you're gonna find the extremes.
Yeah, I know. It's hard to believe. The internet is not real. At least not in that sense. Anyways, I find it interesting. I don't know if it's means a damn thing. I'm sure somebody, you know, Joel White is watching, he probably has a very uh strong, you know, theory or case why like this this is happening and it means something and uh I'm willing to defer that, you know, he's smarter than me. But either way, fascinating and we'll see what happens. I mean, hell, I hope it's I hope it's a turnaround because, you know, I work at a site and all that stuff downstream.
Yeah. It all comes down comes down to us. If they're winning business, they got to hopefully that means they got more sites they got to select for more studies, right?
Well, then it comes into like is this additional businesses or is this just additional recognition of revenue? So like their book to bill is improved, which doesn't necessarily mean additional work is coming in the door. It just means they're recognizing more of the actual work that they I don't know. I tried to go down that rabbit hole of learning some of this stuff and I found I got incredibly bored by it, frankly.
Um, fair. And you know, it's like most things. I mean, statistics can you can kind of do anything you want to do. Um, but we'll see. I mean, we'll see what the what it brings or uh sentiment changes in any ways. Again, I mean, I sure I sure hope it means great things. I hope it means we're going to see a bajillion new studies coming in. They're all amazing.
Well, I mean, just in the industry as a whole, that'd be nice to see a bump because right now, I mean, I think you're seeing like it's I mean, it's not to be like depressing about it, but a lot of the conversations you're having, especially at like people are there's a lot of uncertainty which is causing a lot of people to like stall or stagnate and it would be nice to not be there. And but I don't know what's going to turn that around. So, you know, maybe uh we'll see. I guess these things come in waves anyway or in cycles.
Um, although you know I think there's probably more uh extenduating circumstances around those things now than maybe ever before.
Well, I mean, like that's some of the the that I've been talking to folks about, like talking to folks who were at, you know, earlier this summer at ASCO. Um, and the general sentiment was like this is what the changes in the past six months are going to set research in the US back decades like just as far as like new people entering the field and investments being made and where research is going if it's not going to be in the US and building infrastructure elsewhere, which is going to detract from the US. So it's it'll be interesting to see what the long-term impact of this is across the board for research as an industry but more specifically research in the US because I think we talked about this a while ago how like you know other countries are seeing much greater investments in research like Mexico is a huge one that's getting bumps like seeing some stuff in India that there's more activity going on there so people are sort of that's true and I research this is in like some of the stuff we preparatory to this like we've seen I mean there was a recent I don't know is it a legislation I don't know what it is but like or directive about doing oncology trials like a certain percent like they need more US data in order to get an FDA approval uh I should maybe this is something I should have queued up so because now I'm kind of just talking out of my ass but if I recall it's that like there are oncology trials where the you know things have gotten FDA approval based off of like almost no US patient data.
Yeah, which, you know, I don't know. I don't know if that matters or not, frankly, from a scientific standpoint. Like, so I think, and I'm totally pontificating here on on what I remember vaguely reading, but I feel like this has something to do with like what is standards of care in other countries. And so if you have control arms that are being done in other countries, it's hard to make a parallel to say like is it you know was there significant improvement in the control group versus the experimental group because they're receiving different the standard of care could be different or so something to that nature again like maybe we should have pulled it up but it was having to do with like the control arm pieces of it. it need to have more US population to be representative in the US populations for the FDA to want to approve it which is interesting but like in other other countries like how many other countries are like completely deferring to the FDA so yeah yeah
Well, I think it's I mean, I don't know if it's good or bad. I mean, obviously we struggle to get patients enrolled in trials here so if there's now a mandate that like this percentage of patients need to come from, you know, US trial sites or the patients that are in the US like does that slow things down significantly potentially and or like do we do we actually get better at doing what we do so that it doesn't do things we're going to change protocols so that they more tightly align with you know whatever is happening standard of care-wise in the US like I'm curious to see what something has to change. Either things are going to get harder and take even longer, which god god forbid because it feels like it's that's going to be hard to do, or you have to improve something to actually make it easier for sites to enroll patients in the US.
Well, I think that's why our industry has struggled so significantly because we make these incremental changes in these disperate silos and so we'll change one thing here which in theory is a good thing and then but that doesn't actually we don't do anything in the other connected pieces that to to reflect it and change it so we're not it becomes just another issue and a hurdle like I feel like technology is a great example of this like we're like oh we're going to implement this one thing and it in theory should be really good, but we haven't adjusted the rest of the ecosystem technology wise to like make it actually work. And so then you end up just making things more complicated by introducing more things. And I think we do that in the industry where we make incremental changes where like maybe we change a regulation and in theory that should have these great downstream effects and it helps you know address and make sure like US is more represented in research but if we're not changing how easy it is to do research in the US that's going to have like the converse effect and so in theory it should be good but we also then need to adjust all of these other things and no one talks to each other in this industry so we never managed to do it.
Yeah. Well, and I if I had to guess, I mean, if I were a sponsor, I'm I'm guessing there's a reason why they would get more patients outside US, it's probably I'm going to guess it's cheaper, but just conjecture on my part. And it sounds like it's easier. I mean, I I'm in multi uh plenty of studies that are happening in multiple countries and, you know, you see the leaderboards and oftentimes it it's not in the US is out there like killing it. you know, it's it's countries outside the US. So then then you start to wonder like how would you write your pro who would you write your protocol for if you're a sponsor?
Well, you probably write it for sites outside the US to be more friendly to those sites than sites in the US. I mean, if recruitment's easier and it's less expensive, then yeah, you would, right? But again, I don't know that that's been the case. It's just something that occurs to me that I wonder I wonder what degree that happens, if at all. I don't I mean, but then I think that that's also a lot of credit for like active like proactive evaluation or writing of protocols and it feels like a lot of protocols are copy paste and so like are we how much are we critically thinking and like rewriting and being strategic about writing protocols to help with recruitment to help with execution like I feel like again it's what we're saying it's one of those silos where like these are written in this bucket it's not related to site feasibility and site activation it's not related the patient recruitment. Everything happens in these buckets and these silos and so we end up with this incredibly inefficient system.
Yeah, you said it, man. You said it.
All right. Well, we're about at our half hour. Not a single comment today, guys. I'm disappointed and sad. Maybe two times a week is too much.
Be like, "Go the away." Yeah. Please stop. Please stop. Please stop.
Well, you know, they have to add that comment for it to be relevant. So, there you go. The absence of a no does not equal a no. So, at this point, we've got not gotten any nos. So, we're not assuming it's a no.
Wow. Really winning. Really winning. That's a good way to look at it.
Cool. Um, what do we got next week?
Yeah. So, we have Josh Rose from Hawthorne Health coming on. talk about previously of CVS I think I believe so a while back he's been with Hawthorne for a while I think yeah yeah yeah yeah so I think we're talking about patient recruitment and then the pharmacy space but in the smaller scalearmacies and other things that they may be doing in that that realm so yeah that'll be interesting I mean I'm also like if you're if you're listening and you are I was going to make a post about this I might I want to hear from coordinators who work in like retail Retail pharmacy. Retail pharmacy was like or I guess retail. Retail. Yeah, I guess retail. Yeah. I mean, I feel like that was such a big Walgreens, CVS, Kroger, they all kind of jumped in. CVS is done, I guess. I don't know because we heard about I mean, hell, Best Buy came out and talked about now. I know we were going to talk to them, but like I'd be curious to hear from anyone on the ground level um working in retail. So, if anyone's out there, hit us up. I'd be I'm just curious to hear like what's going on on the ground, if anything. Not in not trying to cause any trouble.
Being bullshitting. Yeah, you are. I just want to hear.
No, I know. It's compelling. It's fascinating to me to think about. I mean, again, I know it's like we're two years too late to discuss this probably, but like I know a lot of places were well, they were talking about pharmacists and then like a lot of those, you know, Walgreens CVS like I haven't checked in a while, but like they couldn't keep pharmacists like employed period. I'm like, how are they going to run trials out of thesearmacies? I've been to a Walgreens pharmacy. I don't want to be there a second longer than I need to. Um, I'm curious to hear like how that plays out practically or or if it does.
Oh, I'm also not Walgreens specifically. No, I'm not picking on them. Any any retail? I'd be curious in general.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, and I'm going to also plug too that I would love to hear. So, I know we talked about we're going to be at a couple conferences coming up and at the Viva Summit coming up in September. Going to be doing some sort of panel discussions with sponsors about the actual site experience. So, similar we talked about with like siloed things and people not talking to each other. I would love to hear questions that folks would love to pose to sponsors about the site experience. So, how many sites systems do a site have to log in? So, if folks have questions that they are curious to hear the sponsor perspective on what they think the site experience is, shoot me a message or whatnot. I'd love to hear what your questions are and we can include them as I talk to our lovely sponsor friends in September at the summit. And you could come and register and you should because it's gonna be awesome.
Great job. You did a great job. Shameless. I'm sold. I'm sold on it.
Well, you're coming because we're technically podcasting from Viva Summit. So, that's true. You got You got me there.
Cool. All right, guys. That's it for uh for this sticky notes. You got anything else?
No, I think that's good. And we'll be back next Wednesday for our final Wednesday notifile.
Um, okay. Very good. See you guys next week. Peace.
See you.
Thanks for listening to Note to File. We're committed to continuing to bring you independent and unfiltered coverage of the clinical trial industry. We want to talk about what you want to hear. So, if you have something on your mind, hit us up at notetofilepodcast.com.
[Music]