DCRI Think Tanks demonstrate what is possible when you bring smart people together to tackle the biggest challenges in clinical research. From developing innovative approaches to addressing diversity and inclusion to leveraging artificial intelligence, these meetings are about creating pathways to useful, focused discussions across the healthcare continuum and then moving consensus to action.
Our mission: Address the most critical gaps in clinical research by convening leaders across the healthcare industry to map the way forward in designing, conducting, and implementing high-quality, evidence-based research.
Upcoming DCRI Think Tank Meeting
The First and Last Mile: Primary Care
April 23-24, 2025
Primary care is the cornerstone of a healthcare system, providing comprehensive and continuous care to patients. It plays a crucial role in managing chronic health conditions, promoting preventive care, and ensuring timely access to medical services. However, due to the volume and breadth of patient care, and limited resources, primary care providers often face significant challenges in integrating clinical research and rapidly implementing research findings into practice.
This Think Tank meeting will discuss those challenges and identify innovative strategies to move the needle on embedding clinical research into primary care practice. We aim to answer the following key questions:
- How is primary care evolving, and where are there opportunities to better integrate clinical research? How do primary care research settings differ from other clinical research sites?
- How can we engage and support primary care clinicians to increase their participation in clinical research? How can we leverage existing primary care research networks?
- What types of clinical trials or other clinical research are most suitable for primary care settings? How do we design trials to fit into primary care settings?
- What role can technology play in supporting primary care clinicians to participate in clinical trials?
- What are the potential use cases of trials in primary care settings that bring value to patients, primary care clinicians and their health systems, and industry partners?
Meeting Directors
Expert Meetings & Resulting Insights
For over 30 years, DCRI Think Tanks have convened leaders across the healthcare industry to map the way forward in designing, conducting, and implementing high-quality, evidence-based research. Below, learn about our most recent meetings and read insights from leading experts, or visit our archive of meetings and publications.
Meeting Spotlights
Click the headlines above to learn about the key insights and action items from our most recent DCRI Think Tanks meetings.
Recent DCRI Think Tanks
Given the rapid advancements in science, the pressing health needs, and the drive for greater efficiency, how can we develop platform trials that lead to regulatory-grade analysis in support of registration? Biotechnologies that have the capacity to and are tested for the treatment of multiple diseases will continue to evolve. A single medical product could be crucial for various overlapping populations, which traditionally would have been developed and implemented sequentially. This DCRI Think Tank explored platform trial designs that could span different therapeutic areas and/or leverage precision medicine for simultaneous clinical investigations that lead to regulatory-enabling endpoints to inform registration with regulatory bodies.
Meeting attendees discussed the following themes and opportunities for action:
- In recent years, there has been an explosion in adaptive platform trials, especially for COVID treatments. These trial designs are generally not leveraged for registrational trials – how do we make use more frequent for pivotal trials?
- What are the opportunities and challenges to address for therapies that could be developed for registration using a platform model?
- What are the considerations for platform approaches or scenarios where this would be advantageous for multiple indications, different populations, and at different stages of development?
- What is the value proposition for advancing therapeutics across multiple indications regarding risks, rewards, and cost?
- What are the misaligned incentives across stakeholders that prevent the use of platform trials?
- What does sponsorship look like?
- What are the logistical barriers and challenges with data management?
- What solutions have been utilized to address the logistical barriers in implementing platform designs?
- How can platform designs accelerate early clinical development and support decisions for late-stage development?
Directors: Directors: Kanecia Zimmerman, MD, PhD, MPH, DCRI, and Derek Angus, MD, MPH, UPitt; Meeting Fellow: Benjamin Catanese, MD, Duke University
DCRI Think Tanks brought together leaders from academic, regulatory, payor, policy, industry, and patient stakeholder groups to tackle the major issues in anti-obesity medication development. Discussions delved into the transformational change in the landscape of anti-obesity pharmacotherapy, health targets for obesity treatment, regulatory policies, clinical trial design, health system and payor implications, and a thoughtful examination of ethics and equity in obesity research and care. The obesity use case is a framework for the clinical research ecosystem to adapt to groundbreaking innovations with widespread uptake to optimize overall health.
Meeting attendees discussed the following themes and opportunities for action:
- What therapeutic targets to optimize overall health, beyond weight reduction alone, should we aim for in patients with obesity?
- How can guidance from regulatory authorities be updated to facilitate efficient and equitable research in the obesity therapeutic space? How will this impact clinical/registration trial design?
- How can we address access issues related to cost, coverage, and drug shortages?
Directors: Neha Pagidipati, MD, MPH, DCRI, and Ania Jastreboff, MD, PhD, Yale University; Meeting Fellow: Pishoy Gouda, MB, BCH, BAO, MSC
In May 2024, DCRI Think Tank collaborators investigated the potential applications of real-world data (RWD) in randomized clinical trials by sharing prior experiences, identifying barriers, and proposing solutions acceptable to clinical researchers, healthcare communities, and regulators in both the U.S. and Europe with the intention of identifying efficient and appropriate approaches to integrate RWD in randomized clinical trials.
Meeting attendees discussed the following themes and opportunities for action:
- RWD are useful for clinical trials, but infrastructure is still lacking.
- Identify challenges in acceptability of RWD use and develop an educational process to overcome these challenges.
- The clinical research ecosystem can and must be simplified.
- Use of RWD requires careful consideration of fitness for purpose.
- Support collaboration, cooperation, and partnership between sponsors and regulatory authorities.
Directors: Lisa Wruck, PhD, DCRI, and Stefan James, MD, PhD, Uppsala University; Meeting Fellow: Nina Nouhravesh, MD
Recent Think Tank Publications
Leaders and Partners
The DCRI Think Tanks Advisory Board
Advisory board partnerships with industry leaders help the DCRI Think Tanks program address the right topics, at the right time, with the right people. Our partners provide crucial insight and connections that go beyond DCRI's clinical and operational expertise. From guidance on attendees, framing discussion topics, and contributions to resulting publications, our advisory board members are players in the lifecycle of every event.
