COVID-19 Business Continuity Planning Pulse – August 2020

Customer Colleagues,

At Syneos Health, our priorities continue to be protecting our employees’ health and safety, and partnering with our customers, sponsors and investigators to deliver life-saving medicines to patients worldwide. As part of our commitment to continuous communication, following our initial Business Continuity Planning (BCP) update and weekly updates, we’re now issuing a monthly BCP PULSE to keep you aware of our efforts. 

RESILIENT REACTIVATION – BUILDING REDUNDANCY INTO OUR MODEL

Our Syneos Health office reactivation plans are focused on enabling safe and productive environments – today and tomorrow – for employees, customers and patients. While our office reactivation strategy and operations are managed at the Corporate level, each office plan is managed at the local level to allow for nuanced approaches.

As we bring together cross-disciplinary Office Activation Teams across the globe, all are guided by the “Resilient Reactivation” Guiding Principles below. We’ve activated 15 teams in Asia, Europe and North America who are in pre-planning mode, building redundancy in PPE supply chains and inventory, tracking travel restrictions and monitoring local guidelines.

“RESILIENT REACTIVATION” GUIDING PRINCIPLES:

BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLANNING REACTIVATION SUMMARY

Our Business Continuity Planning Transition Management Office (TMO), in alignment with FDA, CDC, WHO and other local and international health authority guidance, includes multiple workstreams. In each BCP PULSE, we’re including select workstream updates to keep you aware of our learnings and efforts.

• Regulatory Guidance: Aggregating and synthesizing EMA and FDA guidance, updating regulations and restrictions in order to provide direction to our employees and customers on when – or when not – to pivot and/or reactivate.
• Office Activation: Actively reviewing government guidance by region/country/state and outlining office reactivation phases – activating Office Activation Teams worldwide for pre-planning purposes.
• Field Team Connections: Monitoring company-by-company redeployment activities, hosting Field Team Town Halls and focus groups, and compiling lessons learned for in-person activities.
• Procurement and PPE: Building redundancy into our PPE procurement model for CRAs, nurses, and field teams, including added vendor capabilities and inventory.
• Resurgence Preparedness Planning: Preparing for a potential fall COVID-19 resurgence, coupled with the annual influenza surge, by developing scenario plans and sharing best practice learnings to withstand another wave.

BEST PRACTICES – BEING AGILE TO ADAPT TO OUR EVOLVED ENVIRONMENT

Working hand in hand with hundreds of companies – and our 24,000 employees worldwide – we’re designing clinical and commercial solutions every day. Each challenge presents the opportunity to apply key learnings to build better approaches and resiliency.

• ONGOING COLLABORATION WITH SITES & HCPS: Applying learnings from our own closures and reactivations, we are working collaboratively with investigative sites and healthcare providers to help them regain their equilibrium. We invited three US Principal Investigators to join a panel discussion on clinical trial site needs and learnings as they continue ongoing activities or plan to restart trials in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. We have also hosted a number of sessions with field teams to better understand the environments in which they – and their HCP partners – are operating. For both populations, we are tracking local conditions and regulations and providing the tools and resources to adapt accordingly.

REAL-TIME RESOURCES

We’re regularly updating our COVID-19 Resource Center with capabilities and perspectives to navigate, deliver and learn together. We’re looking to exchange your learnings and experiences too.  Should you have ideas, comments or concerns, please contact us.

Thank you for your partnership.