hey guys ecrg here back with another episode
today's episode is about the one skill that the computer won't be able to
replace yet and there's a lot of talk i mean i
recently went to acrp and there was a lot of talk at the
conference about some of this great technology e-source icf
and all these remote technologies that would essentially make
the cra's job much less slash much different
one one person for one of these companies even joked said that there
will be no need for the cra to even go on site anymore
if they were to use all of their technologies and
i think that's absolutely ridiculous because there are a lot of skills
and i learned this from actually one of the big things i took away from the
conference was i mean even though i'm a cra i
didn't really think about it this way but there are a lot of skills that the
cra does on site that cannot be replicated by a robot
by the computer that are instrumental to the studies and the site's success
one of those obviously is the ability to speak with the investigator face to face
and the study team face to face before i get into this topic a little
bit more i want to talk to you guys about the resume review program
been getting a lot of interest in that lately
so it has slightly been revamped i've added a more premium
level product which includes basically everything
that the other ones do basically full resume uh
full linkedin profile review and full uh interview prep guide you through
the process the entire time so that's a premium level product
that's going to be uh available also but there's also the the ones from the
basic where if you just want your resume reviewed with some word
documents and then the most popular one is the one i call the professional
package which uh which has my voice going over your
resume line by line item by item and making the
changes that need to be changed so you can go
replay that rewatch that as many times as you want to understand
what i'm saying and that's one of the most popular ones and that's the
that's obviously the one where i think a lot of people have had the most success
uh but the next level up from that the elite package too
has been really really popular in the last few months actually
i think that one has even outsold the professional package
because of the uh not only does it have the resume review
but it also has the interview preparation too so a lot of people have
been getting jobs lately a lot of job offers have been coming through lately
and i'm so happy for you guys success out there so if you're interested in
that email me elite clinical group gmail.com
so the skill that the cra does that cannot be replicated by the computer
is none other than teaching wait ecrg you said teaching a cra is supposed
to be like an auditor what do you mean by teaching
well actually a cra is somewhat of an auditor but they're there
to work with the site so when a site's documents aren't great
when you know they're not doing their ip accountability correctly
or they're not doing certain things correctly it is up to the cra to
then go on site and teach them how to do it correctly
that is a component of the cra's job and a lot of cras
don't actually like that they feel like they should not have to
teach study coordinators how to do aspects of their job they feel like that
responsibility should be on the site and of course the
site does have a responsibility to do that the site and the pi
and anyone else who is kind of overseeing the study coordinators
they do have a responsibility to help train them but also
there's tons of retraining like when a new protocol amendment comes out
uh the accordions have to be retrained on the differences between that protocol
and the previous protocol um if they aren't doing something correctly like if
they aren't doing a specific test correctly or if they're not they're
keep making protocol deviations because something needs to be done at a
specific time 10 minutes after this et cetera et cetera then they need to be
retrained on how it needs to be done so that is one of the most important
aspects of a cra's job that cannot be replicated by
the computer yet and i'm saying yeah just because you
know i feel like anything is possible with these computers especially when ai
starts kicking in and they start learning from themselves
but that's one of the best things about having a c-ray going on
cra go on-site is that training aspect that is not going to be as effective
when done remotely or when done uh
by self by self reading or whatever on the study coordinators part
because that's already how a lot of training is done but they still require
retraining on a lot of aspects so i just wanted to
discuss this because a lot there's a lot of
notion out there in the clinical research community
that cras are going to be extinct or they're just going to be
working remotely or you know from time to time and of course there's
going to be some changes to the role no doubt about it but one of the things
most important things ycra i believe will continue to go on site
even after risk-based monitoring becomes fully implemented
and remote monitoring becomes uh you know more of a stakeholder in the
industry is because of that training and teaching
aspect that is so vital to a site's success
and you know i think i think a lot of people
you know the industry is very very slow to change anyway
so you know there's the technology out there for
you know the cra job to be less and for a lot of things to be done remotely
the technology is there now but it's not really being adopted that quickly
it's not an industry standard to have all these e-source documents and
e-informed consents and things of that nature there are a
lot of sites that are still using 100 paper um they're not
even they're not even a lot of sites that use
e-regulatory documents there's a lot of sites that still have
binders so it's really going to take a lot of time
and a lot of effort to kind of move along this path so i think cras are
going to be good for as far as in their current working
capacity for at least another five to ten years
and then it might start really changing after that
um but as far as going on site building that relationship with the
investigator and the site staff is vitally important that will always be
important even if they go on site just for that
just for going to the meeting with the
investigator uh maybe it could change to more of like a you know say a salesy
role where you know they you know take them out to
eat for lunch or something like that um because there's less to do on site um
but the training aspect in the relationship
aspect of the cra's role is going to be vitally important and
that's something you just can't replace with the computer
or by talking remotely you just can't replace that connection
and of course sponsors and sites sponsors want good relationships with
their sites because they tend to use these sites over and over
again if a sponsor has a specialty in a certain
therapeutic area an indication so they want that good relationship with the
sites and that's what you get when you send
someone out there on an ongoing basis to communicate with the site and be in a
good relationship with the site so that's what you get that a computer
cannot replace so i hope you guys enjoyed this episode
just want to talk to you a little bit about that because of the notion out
there that cras are going to be replaced or they're going to be 100
home based or there's never going to be a need for a c rate to go on site
that's just wrong and i think that's very very short-sighted so
hope you guys enjoyed this episode as always if you've got any questions
email me elite clinical eliteclinicalgroup gmail.com take care
you