It’s a phrase that has historically never roamed far beyond the corridors of pharmaceutical companies, but now—thanks to COVID 19—the term “clinical trials” has entered the vocabulary of the public at large.

Perhaps at no time in history have the “trials” that pharma companies use to generate data on the safety of a particular drug, vaccine, or treatment been as heavily scrutinized—and at no previous time has CFO Manmeet Soni of Reata Pharmaceuticals believed that the processes and approaches that govern Reata’s “trial design” have been more ripe for innovation.

“Our learnings from the past 9 months are going to influence how we operate for the next 90 years,” explains Soni, who says that these learnings were put into motion last spring as COVID’s arrival shut down trials and began curtailing Reata’s data flows.

“That’s when we began asking: ‘Why can’t we do trials in a way similar to how home health services are provided? Why don’t we deliver the drug to the patient’s home?’” recalls Soni, who says that serving the company as both CFO as well COO allowed him to be more hands-on when it came time to tweak Reata’s “trial design” and the daily activities performed to keep trials on track.

“There will always be certain trials that will have to be completed at the lab, but the pandemic has allowed us to regularly consider how things can be done differently,” adds Soni, who believes that today’s impulse to regularly reconsider current methods and approaches is the biggest change to yesterday’s business as usual. –Jack Sweeney

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