Improving investigative site relationships in 2015 is a top priority for pharma and CRO (contract research organization) execs, according to a roundtable recently hosted by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. Specifically, Tufts found that soliciting input from clinical research sites on protocol design, providing payments directly to study patients, sharing their development plans, and providing feedback via quality metric scorecards can help sponsors and CROs mitigate challenges. Patient recruitment remains the largest challenge clinical research sites face, with more than half of sites saying sponsors and CROs they work with don’t provide sufficient information about the studies they’re working on. Also posing a burden on sites is the way sponsors/CROs pay them. According to the Society for Clinical Research Sites (SCRS), in 2014 about 65% of clinical research sites had less than three months of operating cash -- a slight increase from 57% in 2012. On average, site