Before a pharmaceutical company can begin to initiate testing in humans, it must conduct extensive preclinical or laboratory research through clinical trials. This research typically involves years of experiments in animals and humans.

What Clinical Trials Do

• Provide tremendous learning and treatment opportunities for physicians and patients.
• Offer clinicians a chance to be at the forefront of medical innovation with access to new medicines or devices before their medical release.
• Allow qualifying patients who participate the opportunity for higher quality of care because of the extra attention they receive from the research team. The team can also learn more about the patient's the condition.

Patients who are considering participation in clinical research should discuss all options with their physicians and medical caregivers.

Asheville Cardiology Associates Research Center

Asheville Cardiology is a unique resource for Phase II-IV clinical trials. Our approach is uncompromising. Each study is carefully planned and conducted to provide quality care to our patients. We work with clinical trial sponsors to provide high quality research services and to accommodate sponsor deadlines.

What We Provide

• Personal involvement of experienced and credentialed physician investigators in the execution of research protocols.
• Experienced coordinators, most of whom are certified clinical research coordinators (CRCs) and registered nurses with practice experience. They offer high quality, skilled assessment and triage support for our studies.
• Timely and successful enrollment of study subjects.
• A high level of attention and priority among our dedicated research staff in executing research protocols.

Furthermore, we often exceed sponsors' expectations for research integrity, subject enrollment, patient protection and expeditious delivery of accurate data. Working closely with the Institutional Review Board (IRB) governing the clinical trial, our practice takes careful precautions to ensure the protection of study participants' rights and welfare. Participants are kept informed throughout the course of their participation in a clinical trial.

Staff Expertise

Our experienced staff operates with medical supervision in every phase of clinical trial activity. All study activities are under the direction of the medical director of research in addition to the principal investigator for the study.

Staff members are trained to provide thorough screening and patient consent to ensure that candidates are well qualified for each study and understand what it means to participate in research. Research staff members assist investigators in conducting all phases of clinical trials.

Our study coordinators are registered nurses with practice experience to assure proper care of patients in a clinical trial and are trained and certified in shipping biohazardous materials.

Our management staff provides oversight for studies, including study budgets, contracts, IRB submissions and regulatory paperwork, as well as expansion of our physician and study volunteer databases.

Responsibilities of our motivated staff include placement of studies with appropriate investigators, regulatory and IRB document submission, study tracking, finalizing contracts and budgets, patient recruitment, providing study coordination and completing case report forms. If you would like more information about our research department, please contact our office at (828)274-6000 or (800)544-7489.