Alcon decided to take a platform-based approach to support its clinical transformation efforts when parent company Novartis decided to spin it out as an independent organisation in 2019.
Speaking at the 2024 Veeva MedTech Summit, taking place from 5-7 November in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Alcon outlined what its transformation journey has been like and why a platform-based solution has proven effective for supporting customer needs.
After it was spun out in 2019, Alcon effectively became a ‘pure medtech company’, but one that also had a pharma portfolio and executed clinical trials.
In 2019, the company adopted Veeva Vault, computing company Veeva Systems’ cloud-based content management platform for clinical data management, reporting, and helping companies to meet regulatory requirements.
The first Veeva Vault applications Alcon implemented were its Clinical Data Management (CDMS) and Clinical Trial Management System (CTMS), and more have followed over the past few years.
With a full platform strategy in the form of Veeva Vault, Leianne Ebert, head of clinical data operations at Alcon, said the company now looks to Vault each time it has a business need.
With applications like CDMS in place, Ebert shares that Alcon is now able to deliver databases quickly, with around 35% of its portfolio getting databases in four weeks or less, and the ability to lock studies in at a median rate of 10 business days.
Ebert commented: “Our sites love it. One of the ways that we evaluate whether or not the sites like using our CDMS solution, is in how quickly they enter the data.
“Our belief is that if they're not getting the data in the system, they're probably avoiding it for some reason, and usually it's because we've not done a good job of building the databases and making them user-friendly.
“This is something we monitor regularly, and last week, our records showed that 45% of our data is entered on the same day as the visit date.”
Speaking with Medical Device Network on the conference sidelines, Ebert offered further remarks on customer feedback, sharing that throughout the transformation period, Alcon made an effort to listen to customers thoughts, concerns and walk them through any areas of doubt.
“I think that impacted the change curve for them to where they started to have more confidence,” Ebert said.
“A lot of it is an exercise in confidence building, getting customers who use the services we offer the reassurance that what's going to be released is going to work, and that it's going to help them be more successful, instead of being a burden to them.”
Ebert added that her belief is that, with any form of change, you need to be intentional about it, and advise and be upfront about what its impact is going to be and continue to communicate closely with customers around the changes and get people to understand the rationale behind them.
“Once they understand the whys around process changes, they're usually on board,” Ebert concluded.
