By Marelise Epstein, Senior Vice President, Laboratory Operations, ICON

Innovative laboratory solutions have the potential to optimise clinical research processes, create more efficient operations and improve sustainability to support wider organisational objectives. As technology and innovation rapidly advance, so does ICON’s vision for the future: think kit-less kits, greener supply chains, artificial intelligence (AI) enablement and automated laboratory processes.

Achieving these goals, however, is much like the proverbial journey of a thousand miles – it requires firmly and deliberately planting one foot in front of the other. Making an innovative vision reality requires iterative stages to ensure that, at each step, we are maximising safety and efficiency while simplifying the real-time collection, registering and management of samples that are core to clinical research.

Pivotal steps on the path of innovation

ICON’s newly launched LabView360 marks a pivotal step toward realising our vision of more agile and proactive laboratory solutions. The ultimate goal of this sample management tool is to enable fully transparent, end-to-end sample tracking. This custom application is designed to track samples across both ICON and third-party laboratories, integrate with bespoke reporting systems, and digitise the entire sample chain of custody. By doing so, it delivers new levels of visibility and control throughout the process.

The current release of LabView360 is already enhancing transparency, optimising workflows and reducing personnel burden with paperless sample requisition. This progress positively impacts data quality and streamlines operations by minimising the volume of queries between study sites and the lab, which can require significant time and effort from all stakeholders and contributes to costly delays that create bottlenecks for sites, CRAs and sponsor teams.

By reducing site burden and increasing control over traditionally manual, inefficient processes, sustainable implementation of sample management technology lays the foundation for future advancements. The next generation of LabView360 will provide even greater operational efficiencies and transparency, along with custom analytics to deliver greater chain of custody insights for strategic decision-making. Knowing the exact location of a sample at every stage benefits sites, study teams, and sponsors alike, saving valuable time and resources.

Forecasting greener futures

A stronger focus on sustainability and environmental consciousness is increasingly shaping the future of healthcare and life sciences. ICON is at the forefront of this shift with the development and piloting of a revolutionary kit forecasting technology aimed at reducing kit waste. This innovation addresses the intersection of sustainability, logistics, cost, and operational efficiency, offering a holistic solution to a multidisciplinary challenge.

ICON’s kit forecasting technology is powered by AI, which leverages our robust, custom-built datasets to analyse consumption rates and usage patterns at clinical sites to better predict demand and ensure more precise oversight. This enhanced visibility, when paired with leaner manufacturing processes and just-in-time delivery strategies, is significantly reducing kit waste across our study programs.

The paperless landscape of LabView360, which significantly reduces the use of paper-based requisition forms, combined with clear forecasting and strategically leaner kit design, helps minimise environmental impact.

As sustainability becomes a growing priority for all clinical development stakeholders, the balance between eco-friendly initiatives and the practical, logistical needs of trials is under constant evaluation. Certifications such as My Green Lab (which ICON is currently pursuing) are gaining traction as proof of a lab’s commitment to sustainability, helping to establish a framework for greener practices in an industry known for being resource-intensive.

Designing for disruption

An agile approach to innovative labs means designing for disruption. This is two-fold:  innovation should both disrupt the previous status quo and be designed to enable the next generation. For example, we are working toward the vision of “kit-less kits”. Eventually, our process will facilitate sites to build their own clinical trial test kits from a configurable, streamlined inventory of bulk supplies. This will ensure kits are available immediately when needed, reducing kit wastage and aligning with stakeholder sustainability goals.

This long-term kit-less goal will disrupt the current kitting process which we are currently optimising through our kit forecasting system. However, forecasting insights and the supply chain efficiencies are foundational to the achievement and success of going kit-less. These innovations will also be useful for specialised therapeutics, which would still require the configuration and shipment of individually built kits.

Designing each step as a complete process maintains continuity. It brings us closer to innovative goals and mitigates the potential risk involved in implementing innovations. Technological disruptors cannot jeopardise the samples and data that are vital to the clinical development program. As such, contingencies are built into each stage. Even manual backup processes and equipment redundancy are critical components of a successful innovation strategy, ensuring continuity and uninterrupted sample processing during potential downtime.

Meeting tomorrow’s needs

ICON’s approach to realising the vision of innovative laboratory solutions mitigates risk by building each stage as a holistic, fully operational solution that benefits sites, study teams and sponsors, and saves valuable time and resources. We are dedicated to the development of strategic, flexible approaches that further leverage clinical informatics, state-of-the-art technologies and our global harmonised laboratory networks to deliver high quality results that continue to meet sponsors’ needs – today and tomorrow.

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