By Clinical Research News Staff

December 18, 2025 | The 3rd Annual Site Innovation Award has just named finalists for 2026, recognizing sites and partnerships pioneering new approaches to improving clinical trials. Finalists will present their concepts in-person at SCOPE, February 3-6, 2025, in Orlando, Fla, and winners will be named during the event.

The Site Innovation Awards recognize successes that can inform the broader Clinical Operations Community at SCOPE. Winning projects have included any site operations-related process improvements that effectively reduce site burden and improve a site’s ability to advance clinical research while providing patient-centered care.

The Site Innovation Awards are one of several awards given each year at SCOPE. The team of expert judges highlighted six finalist projects. Here are their project titles and descriptions in their own words:

Science 37: Redefining Clinical Trial Delivery to Accelerate Research and Development

From Science 37

Our Innovation: The Direct-to-Patient Site Science 37 pioneered the first FDA-Inspected Direct-to-Patient Clinical Trial Site that enables study participation directly from the patient’s home. This approach represents a breakthrough in site operations: expanding reach, reducing participant burden, and improving data quality through a scalable, quality-driven model that is redefining how research is conducted.

“Everyone is searching for something…we just want to help them find you” (Quote from The Internship movie, 2013)

From TrialScreen and The Association of Multisite Research Corporations (AMRC)

Informed/motivated patients, caregivers, and managing physicians see the hope that a clinical trial can bring, and the right thing to do is to provide them with a mechanism to find a clinical trial, evaluate fit, and connect with a clinical trial site.  With the introduction of AI and other new technologies, it is now feasible to surface study information from all global public registries in a way that people can understand who a study is for and what participation involves before sharing any personal details. But this often breaks down in the last mile - connection of the engaged patient to a clinical trial site. We have technology to automate the referral workflow, but with less than 20% of emails from public clinical trial registries being correct, the site will never receive the referral.  At TrialScreen, we are partnering with the Association of Multisite Research Corporations, AMRC and other organizations to update site contact details at no charge, so that patients searching for a trial can be connected.

Faster Enrollment With Automated Medical Record Retrieval and Review

From Predoc

Independent research sites face a common but costly operational bottleneck in therapeutic trials: delayed or unattainable medical records and time-intensive chart review which hinder enrollment velocity in the pre-screening and medical qualification phase. In fact, this workflow consumes approximately 60% of recruitment effort and on average requires 7 hours of human labor to find one eligible trial candidate. Predoc seamlessly connects to digitally-available health data and EHRs, while intelligently managing manual retrieval to quickly retrieve all available records. With Predoc, record retrieval turnaround times decrease by 80% and reduce the time from pre-screen to enrollment by over 50%.

Co-Creating the Future of CNS Trials - A Site-Driven Tripartite Partnership Between Medidata, Cogstate, and SCRS 

From Medidata, Cogstate, SCRS

The Medidata-Cogstate-SCRS collaboration delivers the site experience in Central Nervous System (CNS) clinical trials by uniting technology, science, and direct site engagement. Building on Medidata and Cogstate’s integrated eCOA and scientific partnership, Medidata extended its innovation post-launch through workshops and usability programs co-developed with the Society for Clinical Research Sites (SCRS). This tripartite alliance empowers sites and raters to shape the very tools they use, transforming feedback from real raters into product enhancements that reduce operational friction, streamline training, and ensure reliable, high-quality endpoint data. Together, the collaboration delivers a validated, site-centric model that modernizes CNS trials without increasing site burden.

From First Study to Full Enrollment: How Collaboration Empowered a Community Site to Exceed Expectations

From Medical Research Network

Innovation often looks like using a tried-and-true solution and solving a problem by thinking of a different way of doing things.  In this case, we focused on providing a trial naïve research site the tools, training, and on-going support to bring clinical research into a community that previously did not have that resource for its patients.

Driving Breakthrough Innovations: Central eSource Transforming Site Solutions

From Adams Clinical, Lilly, and CRIO

Lilly set out to reduce site burden by helping sites move off paper and avoid the time-consuming process of building source templates from scratch. In a global phase 3 trial, they offered CRIO’s Central eSource platform as an optional tool, preloaded with a centrally developed source template that was built by site experts and supports their workflow. This saved sites days or even weeks of setup while preserving flexibility. By enabling remote access to source data, the approach also reduced the need for on-site monitoring visits, giving sites back time and space during trial conduct.