Accelerate clinical trials with a connected financial ecosystem

By Rajesh Patel, senior director of product management, clinical trial financial suite, IQVIA

The complex nature of clinical trial finances can delay site payments and stall trials. Creating a connected financial ecosystem using IQVIA’s new Clinical Trial Financial Suite (CTFS) simplifies finances to enable faster payments and smoother trials.

Today, activities like budgeting, contracting, invoicing and making payments are carried out in different disconnected systems. This creates multiple data streams and results in inefficient workflows, like people needing to manually re-enter data from one form or system into another.

Fragmented financial systems and processes aren’t just inconvenient — they’re a burden on clinical trials. They can hinder speedy payments to sites, create the potential for human errors and lead to sites becoming disengaged if they’re not paid promptly.

As part of CTFS, the CTFS Site Payments module is a next-generation SaaS solution that converts clinical trial site payments from a siloed function to a unified activity within the clinical trial financial management ecosystem. It leverages agentic AI to automate parts of the process, such as document management, resulting in faster cycle times and higher site satisfaction.

Connection changes everything

A connected financial ecosystem creates a single work environment and data stream to reduce tedious work, like data entry of budgets from CTS or line items from invoices.

When budgeting, for example, sponsors and CROs can use IQVIA’s CTFS to leverage global benchmarking cost data. They can pair pricing considerations like procedures, site locations and disease prevalence with insights into past payments and performance to accurately budget clinical trials and draft contracts with fair-market pricing. This can simplify site negotiations and accelerate onboarding.

Additionally, once a budget is finalized, it stays within CTFS. It doesn’t need to be manually re-entered in a separate payment system, and a sponsor or CRO can start applying invoices and payments against it right away. Having this single source of financial truth can drastically reduce effort and overhead for sponsors and CROs that work with hundreds or thousands of sites each year.

Sites will also appreciate the improved experience that a connected financial ecosystem creates for them.

For instance, IQVIA’s CTFS Site Payments can tailor payments to each site. Whether a site prefers to upload invoices through software, send them via email or trigger payments through an electronic data capture system, their preferences can be configured in the suite. What’s more, sites can track invoices, review payments and reconcile potential payment issues all within the suite, creating a more streamlined process on their end.

Across the financial lifecycle, embedded agentic AI within CTFS can also reduce human effort and save time. For instance, it can be used to set up budgets, process invoices and identify anomalies, freeing up teams from these tasks and allowing them to be more productive with their time. AI can also use insights from across the financial lifecycle to predict and forecast payments of future studies.

What to consider

IQVIA’s CTFS creates a connected financial ecosystem and orchestrates all financial aspects of clinical trials. It delivers the core capabilities that sponsors, CROs and sites need:

Integration: The suite does more than combine multiple systems into one environment — it also talks to other tools and systems that are part of the end-to-end process, such as ERP, EDC and CTMS. The suite’s API-first design and advanced integration technology makes it interoperable with the rest of the clinical trial ecosystem.

Flexibility: Clinical trials vary widely by geography, sponsor, phase and site type. IQVIA’s CTFS can be configured to the unique demands of specific clinical trials and to stakeholders’ different operating models. Sponsors and CROs can adapt rules, approvals, interfaces, workflows and data models to their individual needs or preferences.

Innovation: Continuous improvement matters to sponsors and CROs that are constantly looking for ways to make clinical trials more efficient and cost-effective. Through regular new releases, IQVIA’s CTFS will introduce new and improved features that enhance how well clinical trial finances are managed.

If sponsors or CROs are considering bringing payments in-house using the suite, they should first consider whether they have the necessary resources to take on all these demands. They may discover the safer route is a hybrid approach: bringing core payment activities in-house while continuing to rely on a trusted partner for resource-intensive activities.

IQVIA can work with sponsors and CROs to determine the balance of insourcing and outsourcing that works for them and manage the activities that need to be outsourced.

Easing workloads

While clinical trials are increasingly complex, managing the finances for them can be made simpler than ever. By connecting data, processes and people in a unified ecosystem, siloed systems and fragmented processes — and all the inefficiencies they bring — can become a thing of the past, and payments can flow faster.

Learn how IQVIA’s CTFS supports smarter and faster clinical trials.