Insight
Supporting patients with logistics built to adapt as trials evolve.
Clinical Research Services
Behind every clinical trial is a patient looking for answers — and a logistics system that must keep pace with a shifting trial landscape. Manufacturing and distribution pathways are more intricate, regulatory expectations continue to evolve, and studies increasingly span multiple sites, geographies and patient centric delivery models. With each new therapy, the operational bar rises — along with the anticipations of patients waiting for treatment.
These trends are reshaping what trial operators need from their partners. As studies become more distributed and more dependent on coordination across every handoff, logistics providers must evolve from transport vendors into integrated operational collaborators who can anticipate complexity and adapt to each protocol.
That’s the role McKesson Clinical Research Services (CRS) is built to play.
“Clinical trials are essential to advancing medicine and bringing new hope to patients,” says Brian Richard, Vice President of Clinical Research Services at McKesson. “Through a deep understanding of each protocol and the logistical demands behind it, we support the safe and reliable delivery of investigational therapies — both to trial sites and, when appropriate, directly to patients in their homes.”
Ask any clinical supply or operations leader, and they’ll point to the same underlying challenges: the need for speed, streamlined coordination and dependable delivery of investigational therapies — all within strict regulatory compliance. It comes down to four core factors:
The operational lift keeps growing. It’s more challenging than just moving boxes; it’s coordinating sourcing, labeling/packaging, temperature-controlled storage, dispensing, documentation and reporting — all while maintaining audit readiness and controlling costs.
You need to scale without friction. Studies ebb and flow by phase, cohort and geography. “One-size-fits-all” depot models only truly fit one size. These big, rigid solutions can’t flex and adapt to the nuances of your program.
Licensure gets complicated fast. Patient-specific or direct-to-patient (DTP) shipments require the right licenses, which can be a barrier if you’re not set up for it — without proper licensure, you risk regulatory violations and costly delays.
Quality cannot slip. Sponsors need reliable drug sourcing, temperature integrity and quality systems that keep shipments accurate, auditable and on time.
CRS reduces these pressures by unifying facility licensure, compliant storage, distribution and quality controls into one streamlined operation — helping sponsors get the right therapies to the right patients, reliably and fast.
1. Quality and Compliance
Every shipment moves through a four-point quality check to maintain a >99.9% shipping accuracy rate[0]McKesson Clinical Research Services & Clinical Trial Solutions aimed at minimizing deviation, helping to ensure the correct medications reach their specified locations on time. CRS operates under a robust quality management system, with licensure coverage and compliant storage across ambient, refrigerated and frozen conditions — all tracked and reported in alignment with protocol requirements.
“Each member of our team takes their job very seriously and wants to see that orders are processed and verified correctly on each dispense,” says Karen Thompson, a research pharmacist at CRS. It’s her team’s responsibility to review and confirm each product order and delivery destination — whether active drug or placebo — to maintain strict adherence to protocol. “Our patients deserve the best care possible, and we strive to provide what they need to continue their treatment in a timely manner and as prescribed.”
2. Integrated Services, One Partner
CRS brings clinical management (including REMS), inventory management and reporting, pharmacy services and product sourcing into one coordinated operation. A single logistics partner can help reduce administrative complexity and offer clearer data visibility. The team can also support manufacturing coordination — labeling, packaging, over-encapsulation and placebo — to reduce handoffs and administrative burden.
“The work our CRS pharmacy does is personal to me,” Thompson says. “We are helping patients have hope and giving them more time with loved ones as they fight their battles. My family has gone through this experience, and we are grateful for the time it provided us with my father-in-law. He was a part of two different clinical trials during his cancer journey, and although he ultimately lost his battle, our family had an extra year and a half to spend time with him and celebrate birthdays, holidays and make memories we still treasure.”
3. Patient-Centric Logistics
CRS supports direct-to-site dispensing and, when allowed by study design, direct-to-patient delivery — backed by broad U.S. licensure and next business day delivery capabilities — to help patients start and stay on therapy.
“For some patients, the idea of daily travel to a clinical trial site can feel overwhelming,” Richard says. “Our goal is to remove that obstacle. By offering dispensing services, we can add meaningful convenience and help patients focus on their treatment rather than the logistics.”
4. Speed and Flexibility
Sponsors can launch faster with CRS’s four-to-six week stand-up time for sponsor-led trials, plus configurable models for bulk or patient-specific dispensing, direct-to-site or direct-to-patient delivery — scaling up or down across phases without rebuilding their logistics backbone.
As clinical research grows more complex and increasingly patient-centric, the logistics supporting each study must respond to changing pressures. Regulatory demands continue to evolve, and every new therapy raises expectations for precision, speed and patient experience. Trial operators need a partner equipped to anticipate these shifts and support them at every step — because real people are waiting in hope for what happens next.
“Patients are at the heart of everything we do,” Richard says. “Our focus is on being a trusted partner and helping advance promising new therapies that have the potential to meaningfully improve quality of life.”
Let’s simplify your next study. Explore how CRS can help you reduce handoffs, accelerate timelines and deliver investigational products to the right patient at the right time — reliably and compliantly. Visit the McKesson Clinical Research Services page to learn more.
