Planning Around a Respiratory Season That Won’t Hold Still

Why respiratory trials built on last year’s calendar are falling behind, and what sponsors need to do differently to catch the season on time. Respiratory disease patterns have stopped following the calendar sponsors are used to. Flu and RSV still show up seasonally, but COVID no longer waits for winter. CDC surveillance data now shows COVID peaking twice a year, once in late summer and once in winter, and last year’s spike in June and July caught most sponsors off guard. In this episode, Emily Friedland, VP of Clinical Research at DCN Dx, sits down with David LaMarche, Chief Strategy and Growth Officer at ERA Health Research, a clinical trial network with sites in Washington state and West Texas. David explains what he’s watching happen at the site level: patients who used to show up for testing now stay home with a runny nose, and sponsors who wait for wastewater data or CDC prevalence numbers before activating their sites are already behind the wave by the time the numbers confirm it. For IVD sponsors and CROs, getting the timing wrong costs a whole season. A rigid protocol, one that requires same-day sample shipping or leans on a comparator with a narrow stability window, can quietly shrink a site’s patient pool before the season even peaks. Emily and David get into why the fix starts earlier than most sponsors think: a CRO chosen by summer, product staged at sites ahead of the wave, and sites trusted to start testing on their own read of what’s walking through the door instead of waiting on a health department report. Access the companion graphic here: https://5217333.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/5217333/Collateral/Expert%20Insights/DCN%20Dx_Respiratory%20Program%20Planning%20Timeline.pdf What You’ll Hear in This Episode -COVID’s two peaks a year, late summer and winter, that break single-wave trial plans. -Why waiting on wastewater data means missing the front end of the wave. -What has to be locked down each spring and summer: sites, CRO contracts, staged IP. -How same-day sample shipping costs sites the after-school rush and weekend patients. -Why hands-on device training before the first positives changes data quality and staff confidence. Guests Emily Friedland, VP of Clinical Research, DCN Dx - Emily Friedland is Vice President of Clinical Research at DCN Dx, where she leads the company’s clinical operations across IVD studies. She has more than two decades in clinical research, including a turn as Global Director of Clinical Operations at Teleflex and earlier roles at Singulex, Grifols, Celera, and Roche, spanning infectious disease, genetic testing, and women’s health. She holds a B.S. from Virginia Tech and is based at DCN Dx’s headquarters in Carlsbad, California. David LaMarche, Chief Strategy and Growth Officer, ERA Health Research - David LaMarche is Chief Strategy and Growth Officer at ERA Health Research, where he leads growth strategy, site selection, and sponsor and CRO relationships across the network’s clinical trial sites in Washington state and Texas. He joined ERA in 2023 after serving as President of Eastside Health Network in the Seattle area and spending nearly 20 years at Virginia Mason, where he built value-based payment models and led the Heart Institute. David holds an MBA from Anaheim University’s Akio Morita School of Business and a B.A. in Business Administration from Washington State University.