The Game-Changing Women of Healthcare

Meg welcomes Liz Beatty, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer at Inato, a marketplace that enables clinical researchers and sponsors to make clinical research more inclusive and accessible for patients no matter who they are or where they live. Inato also increases clinical trial efficiency by enabling all community sites to offer the right trials to their patients. 

Meg and Liz discuss the problems with the traditional clinical trial landscape, the role of the doctor and care team in the process, the difficulties for patients in accessing the right clinical trials, and how Inato is bridging this gap while increasing speed and efficiency for drug discovery research. Liz also explains the importance of research and community-based practices, leveraging technology, her mentorship experience, and the impact she hopes to make in the future.

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Episode Credits: 

The Game-Changing Women of Healthcare is a production of The Krinsky Company. 
Hosted by Meg Escobosa. 
Produced by Meg Escobosa, Calvin Marty, Chelsea Ho, Medina Sabic, and Wendy Nielsen.
Edited, engineered, and mixed by Calvin Marty. 
All music composed and performed by Calvin Marty. 

©2023 The Krinsky Company

Creators & Guests

Host
Meg Escobosa
Meg Escobosa has 15 years of innovation consulting experience, focusing on the unique challenges of healthcare since 2012. For The Krinsky Company, Meg leads client engagements overseeing advisory board design, creation and management. She also leads industry research, expert recruitment and trend analysis to support corporate innovation initiatives centered on the future of healthcare. Her background in innovation and strategy consulting began at IdeaScope Associates where she was involved all aspects of strategic innovation initiatives including understanding the voice of the customer, industry research and aligning the executive team to invest in promising strategic growth opportunities. Meg received her BA in Latin American Studies from Trinity College in Hartford and her MBA in sustainable management from the pioneering Master’s degree program, Presidio Graduate School. She is also on the board of a non-profit foundation focused on researching and developing technology to support a sustainable society. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and two teenage daughters.
Producer
Calvin Marty
A man of many hats, Calvin Marty is a Podcast Producer, Editor, Engineer, Voice Actor, Actor, Composer, Singer/Songwriter, Musician, and Tennis Enthusiast. Calvin produces, engineers, edits, mixes, and scores The Game-Changing Women of Healthcare. Calvin is also the creator of the 2020 podcast, irRegular People, among others. Find his music under the names Calvin Marty, Billy Dubbs, Nature Show, and The Sunken Ship. Over his long career as an actor, Calvin's has voiced many Radio and TV commercials for a wide-range of companies and products and has appeared in small on-camera roles on shows such as Chicago Fire and Empire.

What is The Game-Changing Women of Healthcare?

The Game-Changing Women of Healthcare is a podcast featuring exceptional women making an impact in healthcare today. We celebrate our guests’ accomplishments, setbacks, and the lessons they've learned throughout their careers. We dig into the many healthcare issues we face today and how these innovative leaders are working to solve them. Join host Meg Escobosa in conversation with some of the many brilliant, courageous women on the front lines of the future of health.

Liz Beatty: If we stick with the same academic centers that have always done research, we won't really improve inclusion. So going to the community, expanding access is the first step, but actually being more inclusive into who participates in the research, that we have better scientific data coming from the research that's more representative of the actual disease is also a really critical component of the work we're doing in the community.

Meg Escobosa: Welcome to the Game Changing Women of Healthcare, a podcast featuring exceptional women making an impact in healthcare today. We celebrate our guests’ accomplishments, setbacks, and the lessons they've learned throughout their careers. We dig into the many healthcare issues we face today and how these innovative leaders are working to solve them. I’m Meg Escobosa, join me in conversation with some of the many brilliant, courageous women on the frontlines of the future of health.

Welcome back to The Game Changing Women of Healthcare. I'm your host, Meg Escobosa. Today on the show, I'm talking to Liz Beatty, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Inato, A two-sided marketplace to enable clinical researchers and sponsors to make clinical research more inclusive and accessible for patients no matter who they are or where they live.

Hello, Liz, welcome to the show.

Liz Beatty: Hi, Meg. Thanks for having me.

Meg Escobosa: Let's put Inato into context. Typically, clinical trial sites have long centered, almost exclusively in huge, usually urban hubs that have well-known, usually academic, medical centers.

Liz Beatty: That's right.

Meg Escobosa: This is a problem that leads to incomplete data and research that underpins drug discovery.

It leaves out huge swaths of the population, often the most underserved, who have also had higher incidents and rates of the disease. And your organization is typically, it's like tackling the elephant in the room that typically the population that should be getting studied aren't able to be studied because they aren't close to where the research is being done so they're left out and that's a critical gap.

Liz Beatty: Yes. So when you think about where research is conducted, it's at major academic centers, as you mentioned, and generally people are not going there to receive their healthcare. So when you think about access, just at the top level, we're missing out on tons of people around the world who could participate in research, but they just have no access to it today.

Meg Escobosa: Yeah. So the innovation here is that Inato provides that marketplace platform that connects the researchers with the community-based trial sites. Tell us how you came up with that.

Liz Beatty: Yeah. What's really interesting about our story is that we started in feasibility. So we were helping large sponsors assess what countries to go to, what sites to go to, and we were using data to help them make decisions to do that, but at the end of the day, they always went back to the same research centers, regardless of what the data said, and what we found was that there were all of these sites out there who were trying to get access to more trials and were not able to. So because we were the third party intermediary, we were the tech provider in this feasibility platform, the sites came to us and said, help me understand.

I have these patients, I have no trial to offer them. I'm really motivated and excited to be a part of this trial, but I never even heard back from the sponsor. What can I do next time? So it made it very apparent to us that instead of serving the process that existed today, we had to change the process completely to help these community-based research centers get access to trials, and change the playing field for patients as well to get access to trials through their local community doctors.

Meg Escobosa: Well, that's awesome. I mean, really creating access is sort of the name of the game these days. There's just been such a great awareness. I think you probably experienced too, from COVID-19.

We just all notice like, wow, there's a huge number of people who don't get access to care. But let's just clarify too, I know that also the pandemic obviously led to a lot of innovation, a lot of clarity and awareness of big challenges in healthcare. But we're not talking about digital clinical trials. We're not saying that Inato enables research to tap into patients at home, we're saying, “No, you're going to work with researchers at, at research sites, which are now community-based rather than academic, and that the patient still needs to go in and meet with the doctor or the researcher to check-in, how's it going? And measure whatever they're tracking for that particular disease state.”

Liz Beatty: Yeah, so we believe a hundred percent that the role of the doctor and the care team remains really important in the clinical trial ecosystem. For many diseases that are under study today, people still need their doctors and care teams to help them make important decisions, navigate their care journey and decide if a clinical trial is right for them.

Now, in the ecosystem that's happened since COVID-19, it's really exciting for patients. They're getting choices that didn't exist before where they can do more at home, and that's great.Many of our sites can support that dynamic as well, but we still have the doctor and the care team as part of the ecosystem.

Not everything will be done at home and for many patients, they're not seeking to have care 100% at home. So this gives you still an option to receive care through your trusted doctor and care team, but more local to you. You don't have to travel hours and hours or fly across the country to receive access to a clinical trial. You can still receive it close to home.

Meg Escobosa: That's so great. Let's back up and hear about your journey to founding Inato. Where did this idea come from? I know you have experience in the industry. Why don't you back us up and give us some context for how you came up with the idea.

Liz Beatty: Yeah, so I've been in the industry for a long time. I actually worked at a pharmaceutical company in clinical operations for over 15 years, so I know very well the problems that exist today between the doctors, which are research sites and the pharmaceutical companies and how hard it is to really find patients. I got to work on a patient recruitment team when I was in pharma and firsthand, I've seen clinical research and the challenges that have existed for decades in this industry Inato gave me a really interesting place to go next in my career as I went from large pharma into a small startup.

I worked really closely with our founding team to talk about how we could change the dynamic between doctors and pharmaceutical companies to make research more accessible, inclusive, and efficient, and it's a really important shift. That needs to happen to not have the research teams be just a piece of the puzzle, but actually elevate their position in research to help solve some of the pain points that have existed for decades.

So we're really focused on the role of the doctor and their care team and how we can change the environment for them so that they can participate in research without all the burden that has always been put on research sites over the decades. And they can more proactively decide which trials are right for them and their patients.

Meg Escobosa: And what about the patient? How does the patient traditionally find out about clinical research and how does Inato's approach change that?

Liz Beatty: So actually a lot of patients never hear about clinical trials. I mean, I think that's the reality of where we are. There are a lot of direct-to-patient recruitment companies out there. Even pharmaceutical companies, like the one I used to work with, have direct to patient websites now to try to raise awareness and educate patients about clinical trials. And I think COVID-19 is a great example of this. Everyone got to hear about clinical trials through COVID-19 and it is very important that people understand that this is an important part of new medicines being developed and coming to market.

With that said, though, what I learned from my pharmaceutical days is you can do a lot direct-to-patient. You can educate about clinical trials, you can bring awareness about the trials that are available, but at the end of the day, most patients need to bring that back to people they trust. Need to have conversations with their family members, maybe friends, their doctors, their care teams, the people they trust in their overall care journey to say, “Is this right for me, personally?” And this is where an auto really comes in. We want to leverage that trust.

We don't want patients to only be able to access trials by going to a new doctor and starting a new relationship, but actually say, you already have trust built in healthcare today through the people you already seek care from, and can we help you then access clinical trials through those trusted healthcare professionals?

So this is the new trust model we're trying to build through this two-sided platform where we really allow the researchers, the doctors, their care team, decide what's the best opportunities to bring forward into their center for them and their patients. They self-identify for the trials they're really motivated in, and then they're excited then to share those opportunities with their patients through that trusted relationship so that more people can even consider participating in research, not just the ones that are willing to go to academic centers to receive care.

Meg Escobosa: Okay, yeah, so, and there's multiple providers here at play because there's your traditional doctor where you may discover you have the problem, you have the disease, or you're at risk for it, but then you're often referred to a specialist, and we're talking really about those specialists who are those researchers.

Liz Beatty: Yeah, so many of the researchers we work with today are specialists, so we have local community oncologists that we work with. Immunologists, rheumatologists, you know, all of those specialists that you might receive care from are really important in this ecosystem.

We also do work in vaccines, so this is a whole different area of research that we're focused on and a really important area of research. So that's a different type of doctor. So it does depend on the clinical trial and what the requirements are for the specialist or doctor, and we work across all different specialists from a medical perspective, as well as geographies. We're very global in nature, so a lot of companies start in the US and expand.

We actually started both in the US and Europe because we're headquartered in Paris, France, and it was a great opportunity for us to say, “How do we build a platform that serves a lot of different countries and a lot of different health systems,” because each health system is different in how patients receive care and how they engage with their healthcare system in that country.

So we're very global in nature. We thought about that from the beginning as well.

Meg Escobosa: That's great. Would you say that this is a kind of a universal problem, the challenge of access and inclusion for patients in research or something unique to the US context?

Liz Beatty: No, I think it is a universal problem. What, you know, we tried to bring research into community and I think the definition of community might look different in different countries, maybe in Europe, it's not a small community health center. Maybe it's a secondary or tertiary hospital system, but they still don't get as many clinical trial opportunities as that top tier hospital does in the country.

So the same problem of access exists, maybe the language or definitions of what's a community center looks a little different.

Meg Escobosa: Yeah, and is one of your objectives to reduce the cost of doing research by improving the number of patients that get into a trial and to speed the process?

Liz Beatty: Yes. So speed is a really critical part of the equation for us. So if you can reach untapped patient populations and get more patients to enroll in a clinical trial, we know the research can be done faster. We see enrollment rates only going down year over year as competition for the same types of patients increase. So this is really thinking differently to say, “How do we actually expand into untapped patient populations that exist already, and have them also have access to research, to speed up enrollment, to speed up research and drive the cost of medicines down?”

The other part of this that's incredibly important to us is diversity, equity, and inclusion. So if we stick with the same academic centers that have always done research, we won't really improve inclusion of different populations into research. So going to the community, expanding access is the first step, but actually being more inclusive into who participates in the research, that we have better scientific data coming from the research that's more representative of the actual disease is also a really critical component of the work we're doing in the community.

Meg Escobosa: Tell me your journey into clinical research, into drug discovery and drug development. How did you decide to go down this path?

Liz Beatty: Actually, when I was in university, I didn't know about clinical research. I was a biology pre-med major and I graduated a year early, and I had a gap year, so I wasn't ready to go to medical school yet because I hadn't taken all of the exams necessary. And a physician I worked with in the lab side of research at Yale had reached out to me and said, “Well, you have a year between your undergrad and medical school. Why don't you come back down and join us at Yale and continue your laboratory research?” And I thanked him very much for being very kind and giving me such a great opportunity, but decline the offer because I needed to have more engagement with people. So he ended up saying, “Okay, well then why don't you, I introduce you to another physician who's looking for a study coordinator. You'll have a lot of interactions with people and you could say in research.” So this is how I learned about clinical research. I became a study coordinator at Yale. As soon as I had graduated from my undergraduate degree in biology. And that was it. I was 100% in it. There's nothing like being on the front end of research as a study coordinator. I got to learn so much about the importance of research, the impact I could make on people's lives who really needed other options and new medicines to come to market. I was hooked. That was it.

Meg Escobosa: What a great experience, I mean to see opportunities coming your way like that at such a young age. What is a study coordinator? What do you have to do?

Liz Beatty: So a study coordinator is the person who makes sure everything gets done at the research site for that particular trial. So I did everything from talking to patients about the trial, what it meant to participate, going over the informed consent to drawing blood, doing vital signs, collecting the data, and back then it was on paper and handwriting it into the case report forms.

So I did sort of everything. I always say being a study coordinator was a very dynamic and very challenging position because there's so much organization-wise to make sure you're doing correctly to follow the protocol and make sure you have no deviations and make sure that the research is conducted well, especially because it's with, you know, patients who need the best care possible, as well, from the doctor and care team. So, a great experience for me, and that was it. After that, I said, “Gosh, there's so many people I could help in research,” and since I have such a passion for patients and new medicines, I went right into pharma after that to actually start working on new medicines to bring to market.

Meg Escobosa: Good for you. That's great. It is a big job, the study coordinator. It's so true. What are the biggest challenges in driving this kind of change that Inato envisions? Where are you finding resistance, if any?

Liz Beatty: So I think the biggest challenge is it's thinking about a piece of the clinical trial process in a completely new way. So you're asking people who have always done site selection feasibility a certain way through a certain process to try a new way to try something different that hasn't been done before.

And I think it's been wonderful for us, through COVID-19, to see people's willingness to change and try new things, really expand. So I'll tell you, in my days in pharma, change management was a significant body of work for anything new because if there is a way that things are done, there are processes and SOPs and ways that work gets done in large organizations.

And I think through COVID-19, people realized we just need to do some things differently in order to keep the research going. So the willingness or appetite for innovation has changed. So as the perfect storm for us because at the same time that the willingness for change was being expanded, we were actually thinking about bringing research into communities, reducing the need for travel, reducing the burden for patients, which was the perfect timing through COVID-19 where research needed to continue as well.

Meg Escobosa: Yeah, it seems like there is a lot of effort to try and figure out how to reduce the burden for patients. So this is one of those, and they're even just trying to measure the burden on patients. Did you see the Tufts University study? They're doing something called the coefficient of patient burden, and they're trying to measure it, use a metric to come up with it.

Liz Beatty: Oh, it's a real thing. So I don't know if you've had any experience in clinical trials. I've had a family member who has participated in one. There's a lot of ask for a patient that go beyond standard of care, and depending on how sick you are or how difficult it is for you to meet those requirements it can really prevent you from participating.

Nevermind all the things that are happening in your regular life. Your family, your home requirements, your job, all those other things as well that make participating in a clinical trial very hard for many people.

Meg Escobosa: Yes, so true. How big of a leap is it for your sponsors, the pharma companies to partner with you on these initiatives, is it effectively telling them we're gonna take over a department for your business, so you don't need that department anymore?

And so, do you inherently sort of poke the bear, so to speak, of like, wait, there's a risk here for our staff and there may be resistance in that to your vision.

Liz Beatty: Yeah, so I think what's been great about our model is we've tried to build it in a way that can start supplemental to what you do today.

So improving access in the community doesn't mean that you need to have all of your research centers be in the community, we could be a percentage of the sites that you select from. So you can still work with your partners, you can still work with the academic centers that are important to you, and then let us supplement and bring access to those untapped patients that you don't have access to today in the community.

So that's been a really important part of our model. The second part of our model is the pharmaceutical companies know many patients are still in the community receiving care. So it's a very rational place for us to be, to say, “Let us build access in the community where the patients are today, and follow them in their own disease journey,” instead of expecting the patients always to come to the pharmaceutical company. So I think those two points fit, you know, very well together.

From a change perspective, we've actually seen our pharmaceutical companies push the envelope with us, maybe even faster than we anticipated. So we would always say, “Tell us who you are working with already. Give us your site list.” We'll take them off of our sites within our marketplace so that there's no duplication of efforts. We all deduplicate everything for you. And since we've started working with many of the big sponsors, they've now come back to us and said, “Actually, your model gives us so much confidence and trust in going to these centers that why don't we not deduplicate? Why don't you do the first pass and then we'll supplement with the sites that we know we want to go to.” So I think that's the third part of this equation, is that we've built this trust model. Through our two-sided platform where the sites can really showcase what they can bring to each trial in a unique way.

And because we're building this new trust model between the sites and the pharma companies, they're actually coming along quicker in our change management model to say, “Actually we should start with you first and then deduplicate later our list to make sure we get the the highest quality output possible when we're selecting our research centers.”

Meg Escobosa: That's a huge endorsement to your product and your offerings. That's terrific.

Liz Beatty: I think, you know, to be honest with you, the ecosystem of clinical research sites is out there, that data exists for everyone. It's knowing which resource center to go to for each trial is where it gets tricky, and that's what our whole model is focused on. How do you make those right matches so the right research center with the right patients gets in the right trial. So we have less waste in the system and, and less performance issues overall from an enrollment perspective.

Meg Escobosa: Yeah. So where are you getting the data to know where the patients are? How does that work?

Liz Beatty: Yeah, so we have a whole verification or validation model with the sites. So it's coming from the sites, but it's not just self-reported. We are verifying and validating what they say is complete. We are bringing all the context around the data. For that site around capacity, research experience, even DE&I, so other access to diverse subpopulations so that we can have a very well-rounded view of what that site can contribute.

We then work in partnership with the site through an iterative process to come forward with a commitment that we all agree on, that this site can contribute to that particular trial, and it becomes the foundation for the work we do at that center in that trial to help them deliver against as they start enrollment.

So it's a really different way where the sites have the key role to play in building out the right way to showcase their capabilities for the trial.

Meg Escobosa: Right, and are they sharing EMR data?

Liz Beatty: Yes, so they share whatever they have available. So we are global. Technology varies worldwide. So sometimes it's EMR data. Sometimes it's from their CTMS system. Some sites even fill out patient screening logs for us and submit the actual de-identified patient information for us to use.

So we work with them to understand what are their capabilities. What access to systems they have, where they can showcase this information and we don't just restrict them to a certain type of tech, from a site perspective.

Meg Escobosa: And are you seeing a measurable impact in terms of time reduction or increase in number of patients, and are you tracking that?

Liz Beatty: Yeah, we track that. We close the loop on all performance. It's really an exciting part of our model and we've had our first batch of studies already come through and have really strong results when it comes to speed. We're seeing our sites performing almost three times better than non-Inato sites from a performance perspective. Speed is a really key component of this. They have less infrastructure and overhead anyhow to get activated quickly, and then they have less competition, so they're able to readily put their patients on the trial once they're open and ready to go instead of needing to balance between multiple trial opportunities in that given patient population.

Meg Escobosa: That's great, and that translates to real dollars and de-risking the investment on the pharma company’s side.

Liz Beatty: Yes, yes. Our model is also performance-based, so we always take some of the risk on with the sponsors to make sure that the sites deliver along the way.

Meg Escobosa: That's great. That's also another measure of confidence in your offerings. That's terrific.

Liz Beatty: Yes, absolutely.

Meg Escobosa: What have you learned about leading an innovative approach in a longstanding, entrenched industry?

Liz Beatty: So, I think both in my time in pharma and my time at Inato in more of a startup environment, I've learned staying true to your mission and the impact you're trying to make for people really matters. It becomes a north star that everyone can get behind, even if the change is difficult, and I think that's really important.

You know, when I was in pharma, getting innovation projects off the ground, reminding people why, yeah, we were doing it and the impact we were trying to have also made, often made people come back to the table when things got hard. Same now with my work at Inato and, and leading from an innovation perspective and a startup, making sure we build teams of people who are passionate about our mission and the impact we're trying to make so that when things get hard, we can all remember why we're doing it is a really critical part.

I think from leading from an innovation perspective, there's gotta be good purpose and rationale behind it for people to put the level of effort that needs to happen to really make change. And we're not trying to make incremental change. We're trying to make big change. So you have to be able to roll up your sleeves every day and say, “How do we push through? How do we persevere in making this big change happen?” And it goes back to the mission in my mind.

Meg Escobosa: What advice do you have for other startups and startup founders like you?

Liz Beatty: Yeah, so I think for other startup founders like me and in startup environment, I would really spend time understanding the needs and values of your product. I think we should be focused on where we can make a big impact, not incremental change, especially in an area like clinical research where the opportunity is so high for us to affect so many people's lives.

So, you know, as I think about the work we've done, really understanding the needs and value where we can make a big impact, that's a really critical learning we've had along the way, which is why we stopped our feasibility platform we had before and, and pivoted to this model because we learned over time there was a better way that we could do this to make a bigger impact, and I think that's what's really important about being in a startup is, you know, having ability to really live your mission and not just make incremental improvements towards it, but actually say, “How do we do something big that can change the way that this mission is realized?”

Meg Escobosa: When did you realize you needed to make that shift, and was that a painful shift?

Liz Beatty: Pivots are major decisions. We're very bold in our company, and that's one of our core values. So we knew as we collected the data and we saw it wasn't making the impact we wanted, we had to make the shift. Shifts are hard. You know, we needed to transition our customers, we needed to make changes to our team.

All of those things are major decisions and one-way doors, so you can't come back once you've made those types of decisions. So even though the shifts are very hard, at the end of the day, it's been incredible to build what we've built today that has such great adoption and such a big impact because we were willing to be bold and be daring and do something more impactful towards our mission.

Meg Escobosa: Yeah, that makes sense to me. I mean, you have to be bold to take on a startup in this space as well. I mean, you're really in line with a lot of big players. It's very competitive. There's a lot going on. There's a lot of resources here. So it's exciting to hear that you're able to shift like that.

Do you have any mentors that have inspired you and been great resources for you in your career?

Liz Beatty: So there are quite a few women in my career, I think, who have paved the way for other women. So to give you a step back about me a little bit, I went to an engineering university for my undergrad. It was five-to-one men to women.

Meg Escobosa: Oh my gosh.

Liz Beatty: Very imbalanced because you can imagine. Five to men, one to women. I then joined clinical research where actually there were a lot of women.

However, not many women are in leadership roles. When I joined clinical research, there were a lot of women in operations, but not many who were leading the operational organizations, not many who could get past VP and above. And through my career, I got to see many women I work with break through those barriers and pave the way.

For other women to say, “You don't need to only stop at this certain level. You know, you can push through and you can, you know, be the leader you want to be.” I've had many great women leaders who I've learned a ton from over my career who've really helped shape. The way, you know, I view supporting and growing teams and the type of leader I wanted to be as I've now been given that opportunity as well.

So not one direct mentor. Many women along the way who I've had. The great pleasure of working with and under who have shown me, you know, you can break through the ceilings that existed and now many women are on boards and senior levels and organizations. And I think that's been a wonderful transition that I've seen since I started in the workplace.

Meg Escobosa: That's great. In what ways have you grown, Liz, since launching Inato?

Liz Beatty: This has been an incredible growth experience for me. So I was at a large company for, you know, the majority of my career in pharmaceuticals. Coming into this small environment and realizing I had so much to learn in other areas of the business has been an incredible growth opportunity for me. So what's great about Inato is it built on my foundation in clinical trials. That's where I'm strong. That's my background. That's the subject matter I know, but there are new aspects of the work I do that I didn't know before. So I just mentioned venture - VC work. It's something I had never touched in pharma. I lead the sales organization and marketing organizations right now, which were new functions for me as a leader, to understand and really build subject matter expertise that I didn't have before and I did it mostly through networking and learning from others who already are experts in that area.

And people have been incredibly willing to spend time with me, help educate me, share their learnings with me from their own experiences, which has really helped from my perspective, us move quicker into understanding how to build those organizations within our company.

Meg Escobosa: What do you think it is, why do you think they've been so willing to share with you?

Liz Beatty: I think if you respect people's time, right? So I didn't ask for a lot of time, and it's building on what they're really strong in. Most people are willing to share that information. I also went in very humble. Knowing that I was not an expert in the space asking for help throughout my network for people who are really strong in those areas, and it was great. I mean, people put me in touch with all people around the world and in certain topics to help me get started and build my knowledge base. There's been a lot of shared learnings, a lot of honest conversations.

I think that's the best way to. To build and grow as a team is to just be able to be direct and honest with each other along the way.

Meg Escobosa: Are you seeing the next horizon for Inato? I know that you're focused on delivering this marketplace and service to your customers. Are you also seeing whispers of the future of what's next as you develop the solutions now?

Liz Beatty: So we're moving on a lot of our customers into more of a partnership model where they can use the platform across many of their trials or a whole therapeutic area, or even across all of their trials, and I think this is a really important shift for access in the community. So if we wanna allow the sites to pick the trials that are best suited for them and their patients, we have to not just show one trial at a time to them and let them make hard decisions, but actually show them there are options out there and if you needed to pick the one that was best suited for you to deliver on, which one would it be, and that's where the model is really going today.

So we started as most innovations do in a few trials, we've built experience, we've refined the model, and now we're seeing our sponsor collaborators willing to provide us much more access to their portfolio of trials. So that our sites, in turn, can get much more access to a portfolio of trials.

So really excited about that. It just speeds up the model and allows the community to have such an important portion of clinical research to contribute to that they never had before. So this has really been going to be our focus for 2023, is how do you move from individual trials to planning across a portfolio of studies?

How do we leverage community in a really thoughtful way to line up trials for these investigators over time so that there's no downtime and research sites can focus on patient care and not worry about business development because they can get that through Inato.

Meg Escobosa: Do you see this as potentially impacting the way research is done in general or the, you know, the way trials are even conceived.

Liz Beatty: Absolutely. We get a ton of feedback from the local researchers in the community around how can you make the trial more accessible from an inclusion, exclusion perspective, how do you make sure you're actually writing trials that match the people that they see in the community. Not the perfect patient that you hope to find somewhere out there. So, you know, having more of a dialogue between the physicians who are, you know, treating patients in these disease areas already and how the trials are designed, I think is a really important shift that we're able to be a part of.

And then, like I said, getting a higher and higher share of community sites included in research is equally as important from a patient access and inclusion perspective.

Meg Escobosa: Well, congratulations on getting to where you are and for addressing a really important problem in clinical research. And we wish you the very best, keep us posted on how you're doing and,onwards and upward. Thank you.

Liz Beatty: Thank you, Meg. Really enjoyed the conversation today.

Meg Escobosa: Thanks for joining us for the Game Changing Women of Healthcare, a production of The Krinsky Company. Today's episode was produced by Calvin Marty, Chelsea Ho, Medina Sabich, Wendy Nielsen and me, Meg Escobosa. This podcast is engineered, edited, mixed and scored by Calvin Marty. If you enjoy the show, please consider leaving a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts.

It really does make a difference, and share the show with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions, comments, or guest suggestions. Please email me at meg@thekrinskyco.com and you can visit us on the web at thekrinskyco.com.