Michelle Atallah, Director, Business Development, discusses how FHI Clinical quickly adopted new ways to enable fully remote site monitoring in some of our ongoing studies.

FHI Clinical continues to work with researchers to identify and initiate global sites with the most appropriate capabilities and patient population for study-specific protocols. While the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath have presented unique challenges this past year, there are many lessons learned that we can apply to all of our future studies for a larger impact and gained efficiencies.

A question I often hear is, “What are you most looking forward to after lockdown?” My answer relates to something that happened just as the pandemic was taking off in the United States last year: FHI Clinical was awarded the oversight of the Partnership for Research on Ebola Vaccines in Liberia (PREVAIL) Network and had to recruit, hire and train over 200 staff in Liberia to manage the PREVAIL work. Due to travel restrictions and the unknown risks of COVID, we had to do this remotely.