Clinical trial networks, as evidenced during the COVID-19 pandemic, really are “national critical infrastructure.” The pandemic revealed prominent gaps and stark differences in health outcomes across various populations. A community-based infrastructure that facilitates access to clinical research and health care has the potential to improve health outcomes for all, but questions remain about what such a system would look like on a national scale. Collaboration and information-sharing between the public and private sectors are essential to maintaining and expanding research capacity and its readiness—between public health emergencies and for the benefit of all.

FasterCures aims to bring together commercially and federally sponsored community-based research networks to involve more communities in clinical research and to realize an “ecosystem of excellence” in a better-coordinated national system.

In the first issue brief in this series, ‘Lessons from the Pandemic for Federal Action’, FasterCures focused on the federally funded trial infrastructure, federal policy, and resources that might be needed to begin to knit together an ecosystem of excellence.
 
In this brief, we examine the private-sector clinical research landscape for a better understanding of the gaps sponsors and their partners are seeing and to identify opportunities for collective solutions.