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COVID-19 Business Continuity Planning Pulse - Week of March 30, 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.

With that, following our initial Business Continuity Planning update, we’re sharing this week’s Business Continuity Planning PULSE to keep you aware of our efforts. 

COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS

In the last week, there’s been a COVID-19 nomenclature shift from “social distancing” to “physical distancing,” representing the notion that no matter how much COVID-19 may be physically distancing our communities, challenging times like these make us realize how deeply connected we must remain.

At Syneos Health, this means daily Executive Team and Business Continuity Planning Transition Management Office (TMO) updates, and weekly Leadership and/or and Employee Town Halls to share clear guidance and insights. 24,000 of us worldwide are ready to answer the challenges at hand.

Beyond Business Continuity Planning, to learn more about our perspectives surrounding continuity and ways we can actively be part of the COVID-19 solution, we’re sharing the following:

  • Supporting Monitoring Continuity – Join our webinar on Thursday, April 3rd, where we will discuss the latest guidance and actionable steps to optimize remote and centralized monitoring tools to ensure data quality, site support and patient safety. Register at https://go.syneoshealth.com/remote-clinical-trial-monitoring-to-ensure-trial-continuity
  • Syneos Health Podcast Series – To hear directly from our Subject Matter Experts surrounding navigating the COVID-19 pandemic, including our CEO, Alistair Macdonald, visit www.syneoshealth.com/covid-19-resource-center.
  • Syneos Health Ventilator Initiative – To address the mechanical ventilator shortage, Syneos Health has launched an educational initiative to raise awareness about the option of using invasive BiPAP machines (bi-level positive airway pressure) – already available in many hospitals – to potentially delay or remove the need for mechanical ventilation for intubated COVID-19 patients. Visit www.covid-bipapinfo.com to learn more about this public service training program.

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. 
    • Updated Corporate Website COVID-19 Resource Center includes Corporate, Clinical monitoring, and Commercial Virtual Field Team updates in addition to Subject Matter Expert podcasts to ensure you have real-time access to our business continuity efforts.
  • Clinical
    • Intense focus on ensuring clinical trials proceed and that site staff and patients are safe and in compliance with governmental policies.
    • Ongoing guidance for remote monitoring in high-impact/restricted regions, working in lockstep and cross-collaborating with the Association of Clinical Research Organizations (ACRO) and aligned to the guidance from the US FDA and EMA.
    • Tracking and recording of any Planned Deviation to ensure project teams have the agility to amend processes to respond to this new operating environment.
  • Commercial
    • Intense focus on ensuring virtual field teams are able to continue working, based on ongoing communications directly with customers to balance their needs and the safety of our employees.
    • Well-established, flexible processes and infrastructure evaluated regularly to help ensure business continuity, including a remote-powered Engagement Center enabled by 365/24/7 tools, resources and technology.
    • Activation of our Compliance Team, who are experienced in working closely with customers to identify and deploy solutions to the field quickly and efficiently.
  • 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.
    • Compilation of company-wide FAQ repository managed by the TMO where employee questions are logged, assigned and tracked to ensure a timely response.
  • Corporate Real Estate
    • Management of our various sites and coordination of virtual, remote work-from-home guidance as well as reactivation of sites where appropriate.
    • Monitoring and re-establishment of supply chain to ensure our employees and teams have the resources they need to operate.

REAL-TIME RESOURCES

Syneos Health is committed to the continuity of all our services. 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.

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