By Clinical Research News Team 

May 23, 2025 | West Clinical Research (WCR) and Stitch were named the Site Innovation Award winners at this year’s SCOPE Summit in Orlando. The Site Innovation Award at SCOPE recognizes sites and partnerships pioneering new approaches to improve clinical trials. 

WCR and Stitch’s collaboration produced a platform, also called Stitch, that is designed to optimize trial participants’ experiences while also improving other aspects of trial participation and for site staff labor.  

About 97% of study participants used Stitch. The platform successfully reduced no-shows by 27%, equating to nine additional visits per 100 scheduled. It also increased enrollments by 18% and decreased the amount of time site staff spent reminding participants of upcoming trials by 83%, which saved an average of five hours of manual work each week. Communications were also improved, said Stitch CEO Jonathan Moshinsky. “We send automated reminders where people can confirm their attendance with no login required or app downloads, which is crucial for ease of use.” There is also two-way texting between staff and participants, as well as win-back surveys sent to re-engage no-show patients. 

The results show that the platform can enable patients to take control of their clinical trial journey and improve engagement with them, as well as decrease labor costs and the more tedious aspects of administrative tasks for the site team. 

“Since winning the award, West Clinical Research has rolled out Stitch across all their studies,” said Moshinsky. WCR is also using the feedback tool to send surveys to participants and no-show participants, providing valuable information on why no-shows occur, how visits generally went, and any other insights on how to improve the platform. “Most feedback is extremely positive.” 

This year’s runner up was Velocity Clinical Research for VISION, an AI-enabled patient engagement platform that has a patient-centric mobile app (VISION Engage) and a site-oriented patient engagement platform (VISION Recruit). VISION is simplifying patient recruitment and enabling participants to take control of their clinical trial journey, as well as providing site staff more focus on patients and less on administrative tasks, matching identified patients with trials of interest, and more.  

The three other finalists included Active Intelligence, who developed an AI chatbot that multiplies the number of interested study leads a site can contact over the span of a day; Cedar Health Research, who are leveraging AI/ML software to help diverse communities access clinical trials; and WCG Site Network, who are integrating customized site support to help with patient identification and enrollment, thus enabling faster participant enrollment. 

The Site Innovation Award judges included Jill Johnston, chief innovation officer of WCG; Katherine Broecker, senior director of Design Hub Data Insights at Eli Lilly & Co.; Manny Lazaro, senior vice president of Clinical Development Operations at Kailera Therapeutics; Michele Teufel, Site Management & Monitoring Therapy Area Strategy & Portfolio Delivery, Development Operations, AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; and Sean Soth, senior vice president of Strategy and Global Business Partnerships at SCRS.