Clinical research

Today, we have the honor and privilege to welcome Professor Robert Stern, a professor of neurology, neurosurgery, and anatomy and neurobiology at Boston University's Chobanian & Avis Dodge School of Medicine.

Professor Stern is one of the world's leading experts on chronic traumatic encephalopathy and a co-founder of the Boston University's CTE Center and a longtime director of the clinical research Dr. Stern has spent nearly two decades developing methods to detect and diagnose CTE during life, and understanding the long-term neurological effects of repetitive head impacts in former athletes.

Dr. Stern's also led projects including the landmark Detect and Diagnose CTE study, the Head Impact and Trauma Surveillance study, and multiple investigations into concussion-related biomarkers and diagnostic criteria.

With more than 250 peer-reviewed publications, influential roles of the NFLPA and NCAA committees, and more recently, the 2025 Leon Thyre Prize for Research of Excellence, Professor Stern's internationally recognized for shaping modern concussion and CTE science.

She created the brain bank under her direction, along with our center, and what was the Veterans Administration Medical Center.

And she then led all of the work that has changed the world, uh, on CTE, looking at the brains.

And I, as a clinical researcher, have been leading the research focusing on the people while they're alive.

And it's been an incredible ride since.

You just heard a snippet from today's guest, Dr. Karen Correa, VP of Clinical Development Operations at Behringer Ingelheim, one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies.

A pillar in the clinical research community, Karen has held every seat there is in the clinical trial, from the bench to CROs to leading operations across the industry.

Today, you'll hear about the people and motivations driving Karen's work, the gratitude she holds for her entire community, and how a strong team culture can make all the difference when it comes to serving patients.

And now, your host, Zach Gopst, founder and CEO of LeapCure.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm looking forward to the discussion today.

I want to start with like, when was the first time the idea of clinical research came to you? Where did it come from? Where did it start?

That's a long journey.

And I'm suspecting that the idea of talking about passion at a scientific meeting might be very unusual.

People might wonder what role does that play when we're talking about investigations? But for me, passion has been a fuel that has been the engine of my clinical research.

And I think if we're honest with each other, those of us who really do care about what we do as clinical scientists, you may agree that passion helps us to think a little bit more clearly about the problems at hand.

Passion helps us to aim a little higher when we're trying to do rigorous work and reach a little further when we're trying to make a difference.

And we wanted to create a forum for continuing education to share with each other our learnings, as has happened here at Critical Care Reviews.

There's no such forum for this kind of dialogue back then.

I was the first intensivist trained in clinical epidemiology, learning how to do clinical research.

And many more have come along.

It's about making sure those models can work inside the pressure of healthcare, where clinicians are moving quickly, information is often incomplete, and decisions are complicated.

In this episode, we talk about the story behind Bayesian health, why useful technology can still be hard for healthcare organizations to adopt, and what clinical research can learn from the way AI is being brought into patient care.

The question is no longer whether AI will matter in health care.

It's whether we can turn it into something clinicians trust, use, and rely on when patient lives are on the line.

So people understand, you know, we don't see too many adverse events leading to like an AI winter.

Yeah.

And I think one of the things you and I have talked about a lot in the past as well is some of the clinical research applications of this technology.

So I thought maybe we could turn to that a little bit in the time that we have left here and talk about this baseline layer of data provided by the EHR is obviously foundational to the work that's happening at Bayesian, also foundational to a lot of the things that we're trying to do here and that I think the clinical trials industry in general is trying to turn to.

Thank you.

Welcome to the Clinical Research Coach Podcast.

I'm your host, Leanne Wolke.

In this podcast, we bridge conversations between industry, thought leaders, and patients, utilizing a unique perspective, integrating years of coaching with Tony Robbins, coupled with scientific and industry experience.

All right, Leanne, thanks so much for having me on.

Absolutely.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Clinical Research Coach.

If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love it if you'd subscribe and leave a rating and a review.

And since then, you've finished your Master's in, what was your Master's in? Here

in Golden, I finished in Clinical Research.

In

Clinical Research.

And Advait told me the other day that he's found his passion for research, which is a big surprise to him.

Yeah.

a radiation oncologist, entrepreneur, and health tech-focused physician currently focused on bringing AI technologies to workflow within healthcare.

And today we're lucky to feature a very interesting company, Ignite Data, using technology to transform the clinical research process, which we know is quite a clunky one, Trevor.

Yeah, this is always kind of a fun topic for us because we've sort of lived it and can see just the incredible bureaucracy and machinery involved in like a large sponsored clinical trial and the inefficiencies in that whole process.

It's painful.

You know, we've got the CEO of Ignite Data joining us, Zach Taft.

We're really excited for our conversation today.

Ignite Data, you know, I think is most well known for operating at the intersection of clinical research and health system infrastructure and advancing that and the synergy between them two.

But historically, those areas haven't necessarily integrated well or communicated well with each other.