The SCTO and its Clinical Trial Unit (CTU) Network collaborate at both the national and regional levels. Our coordination of activities with other clinical research infrastructures and stakeholders in Switzerland is aligned to the goals for avoiding overlapping activities and benefiting from synergies that are presented in the publication White Paper Clinical Research.
The SCTO has been represented in the national Coordination Platform Clinical Research (CPCR) since its inception in 2021. In 2023, the SCTO led and contributed to several working groups, including:
In order to align activities with complementary clinical research infrastructures, regular meetings with the Swiss Biobanking Platform (SBP) and the Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN) took place in 2023. The aim of these meetings was to address topics of mutual interest, share expertise, and decide on an aligned way forward.
Our President, Professor Christiane Pauli-Magnus, has been representing the SCTO in the national Coordination Platform for Clinical Research (CPCR) since its launch in December 2021. In 2023, the SCTO carried out its first mandate towards contributing to the vision laid out in the White Paper Clinical Research (WPCR), which was published in 2021. For this first mandate from the CPCR, the SCTO established and led multistakeholder working groups that included patient representatives, among other stakeholders. The groups assembled key regulatory pain points in clinical research, elaborated a Swiss wide mapping of services by the relevant stakeholders, and defined minimal standards for clinical PhD programs in Switzerland. The aim of these working groups is to provide recommendations to the CPCR.
From the beginning, the SCTO and the University Hospital Basel have supported the founding of the European Patients’ Academy on Therapeutic Innovation (EUPATI) Switzerland. In 2023, the SCTO continued hosting EUPATI Switzerland’s secretariat and supported its Executive Board in its strategic endeavours, especially with regards to EUPATI Switzerland’s patient expert training course. In 2023, the first Swiss patient expert course for patient involvement in clinical research was held jointly by EUPATI CH and the University Hospital Basel’s Department of Clinical Research. The SCTO actively contributed with lectures on certain topics.