COVID-19 Business Continuity Planning Pulse - Week of 27 avril 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, we’re sharing this week’s BCP PULSE to keep you aware of our efforts. 

PRAGMATIC AND PROACTIVE PLANNING FOR RESTART

Though reactivation conversations started earlier in Europe and APAC, we’re now seeing a global focus on planning for restart. We’re building Restart Assessments focused on reactivation best-practices for Clinical teams; crafting pragmatic return-to-field plans for Commercial teams; and developing office reopening strategies for Syneos Health and customers.

Importantly, we’re celebrating successes among the challenges. The pandemic has given us the opportunity to reinvent the way we do business together – further safeguarding against future disruptions to minimize patient impact. Documenting lessons learned and best-practices remains an important element of this experience as we prepare for navigating what’s next.

Beyond Business Continuity Planning, we’re updating you on our perspectives and public health actions to address this pandemic:

• Invasive Bi-level Positive Air Pressure (BiPAP) for COVID-19 Educational Webinar: Our support of HCPs continues in collaboration with the Emergency Nurse Association and Northwell Health with a webinar on Wednesday, April 29 from 1-2 pm ET. Click here to register for “Invasive BiPAP: An Innovative Alternative to Ventilatory Management for the COVID-19 Patient” or to learn more.
• Insights from Top-Tier Media – We share insights from a national press survey in our new report “Engaging Media During Unprecedented Times.” Journalists from top-tier and trade media outlets, ranging from The Wall Street Journal to the Associated Press and Endpoints News, share insights on their coverage of health, medical and pharma/biotech industry topics during the time of the biggest global pandemic in recent history.

BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLANNING UPDATE

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

• Regional/Country Assessment
  • Ongoing, standardized assessment of risk indicators and other multi-factorial inputs on a regional and country level, enabling rapid guidance and updates related to working from home, site visit policies, and travel limitations/restrictions. 
  • Custom-built interactive map displaying operational status of all Syneos Health office locations globally overlaid with COVID-19 reports via John Hopkins University to provide a “near real-time” assessment of our capacity to operate through this crisis.

• Business Technology
  • Around-the-clock monitoring to ensure our IT infrastructure remains resilient and is able to support remote work (e.g., increase in use of video and teleconferencing services) and any added load to customer-facing or service delivery technology.
  • Custom-built, shared trackers and dashboards help visualize status of key indicators and enable us to focus on areas of concern in near real-time.

• Corporate Communications
  • Rapid and real-time internal and external communications planning designed to ensure updates and changes can be communicated swiftly to multiple audiences who need to know specific information. 
  • Weekly BCP Pulse distribution and real-time COVID-19 Resource Center updates including Corporate, Clinical Monitoring, and Commercial Virtual Field Team learnings, in addition to Subject Matter Expert podcasts and webinars, to ensure you have access to our latest actions and perspectives.

• Clinique
  • Tracking and recording of any Planned Deviation to ensure project teams have the agility to amend processes to respond to this new operating environment.
  • Additional functionality to CTMS and new dashboards to provide project-wide views and monitor site restrictions and flag potential enrollment delays.

• Commercialisation
  • Rapid survey deployment to healthcare stakeholders – HCPs, payers, clinical sites – to gain data and insights into COVID-19 response, impact and needs.
  • Working hand-in-hand with customers on reactivation plans through consistent, proactive communications and best-practice sharing of strategies, tools, and recommendations. 

• Human Resources
  • Global, regional and local management and guidance surrounding the health and well-being of our people, their families and the communities where we work and serve, in line with public health practices, and local labor and employment requirements.
  • Rapid and real-time COVID-19 potential exposure and positive identification self-reporting measures and protocols aligned with local guidance and contact tracing.
  • Identifying our employees’ questions and issues in a dynamic knowledge base repository, and curating FAQ responses to keep teams informed and connected.

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.