Clinical Trials > Setting New Standards for Clinical Trial Expertise

Setting New Standards for Clinical Trial Expertise

By Rich Polikoff Illustrations by Beth Goody

Clinical trials are critical to the advancement of healthcare, but designing and running them effectively are skills that are rarely taught in medical or graduate school.

Mayo Clinic’s new Clinical Trialist Training Program is teaching these valuable, albeit often overlooked, skills to physicians and researchers. The program, which is offered by Mayo’s Center for Clinical and Translational Science, provides protected time over two years for individualized training with a mentor.

We are true pioneers in this area. Right now, there are no standards for training clinical trialists. We are blazing a new but much-needed path.
— Prasad Iyer, M.D.

Each scholar in the program designs and implements a pilot trial and completes both experiential learning rotations and a curated selection of graduate coursework.

“We are true pioneers in this area,” says Prasad Iyer, M.D., chair of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology and director of the new program. “Right now, there are no standards for training clinical trialists. We are blazing a new but much-needed path.”

The Clinical Trialist Training Program is just one example of the ways in which Mayo Clinic is shaping the future of clinical trials. Current efforts also include a focus on reducing activation time for trials and matching patients to trials for their conditions with automated processes integrated into electronic health records.

Mayo Clinic has one of the most extensive clinical trials programs in the world with more than 2,500 active trials ongoing at any given time.