A CRO, or Contract Research Organization, is a company that provides research services to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device industries on a contract basis. CROs are designed to reduce costs for companies developing new medicines and drugs in niche markets, and they aim to simplify entry into drug markets and simplify development. CROs provide a wide range of services, including biopharmaceutical development, clinical development, clinical trials management, pharmacovigilance, outcomes research, and real-world evidence. In the medical device industry, typical CRO services include regulatory affairs, clinical trial planning, site selection and initiation, recruitment support, clinical monitoring, data management, trial logistics, biostatistics, medical writing, and project management.
CROs are hired by sponsors who want to run a clinical trial, and they become a fundamental part of the trial. By outsourcing to a CRO, organizations can ensure their staff is trained to conduct comprehensive research, and CROs provide instruction to organizations to ensure their information is trusted, reliable, and relevant. CROs help teams across the organization track and process data so that research objectives can be met with precision. By providing measurable data, CROs help research organizations remove uncertainty in error detection and baseline metrics tracking throughout the project.
Choosing the right CRO to run a clinical trial is crucial to the trials success. Some of the questions to ask when choosing a CRO include whether they can advise on the choice of centers, the number of monitoring, and the necessary sample size, whether their way of working adapts to that of the sponsor, whether their rates are adequate and provide a clear and disaggregated budget, and whether they are a company committed to the study.
