Jim Kremidas

Jim Kremidas is the executive director of the Association of Multisite Research Corporations (AMRC), a group representing organizations dedicated to conducting clinical research. He spent 24 years at Eli Lilly, where he founded what is widely regarded as the pharmaceutical industry’s first dedicated patient-recruitment department, and has been a leading advocate for patient engagement in clinical trials since 1997. He has also worked on the contract-research-organization side and previously led the Association of Clinical Research Professionals.

Kremidas appeared on Open Door Salon alongside Elisa Cascade, chief growth officer of the patient-recruitment company TrialScreen, for a conversation on patient access to clinical trials, a subject he has spent his career on and then, unexpectedly, lived.

Diagnosed with bladder cancer that did not respond to standard care, Kremidas went looking for a clinical trial and, despite decades of recruitment expertise, found it nearly impossible. He searched ClinicalTrials.gov, ran Google searches, and checked the platforms he knew professionally, and in the end it was a chain of personal contacts that connected him to the trial he ultimately joined. If an industry insider could barely find a trial, he argued, the system is failing ordinary patients.

His prescription drew on his commercial roots: clinicians are the most trusted route into a trial, and the industry too rarely does the basic work of understanding what actually motivates a patient to take the next step and contact a research site. Closing that gap, he argued, would not only help patients but accelerate the development of new therapies for everyone.