The People Behind the Products: Arran Carter

I'm Senior Product Manager of the Regulatory product team and am responsible for the long-term strategy of the Regulatory portfolio.

I drive forward the vision, working closely with members of my Product team who are responsible for the day-to-day management of the solutions, working with the various teams to drive development. Together we build out that vision by listening to what customers want.

I'm actually a journalist by background. I worked for about 17 years in the finance space, within the change management and product side of things.

As with pharmaceuticals, the finance industry is very regulated as well. That added to my knowledge base in terms of what the regulations say and what they do.

When I left that organization, I was the product owner at a company with a growing European footprint. I helped build out what products, solutions, and technology they needed to help that growth.

And then I joined Citeline, just over five years ago now, initially as the product owner for TrialScope Intelligence, bringing along my expertise more around the technology side of things, building out the technical solution.

I then took on day-to-day management of TrialScope Disclose and Core Data for about two years or so. And more recently my role has evolved to Senior Product Manager, taking on the wider Regulatory portfolio scope.

No two days are exactly the same, which is honestly one of the things I love most about this role. At its core, my day revolves around understanding what our customers in the regulatory space need and making sure our products are built to deliver real value for them.

In the morning I'll usually start by checking in with my team, the Regulatory Product team, and our Dev teams to ensure we're on track against our roadmap priorities.

A big part of my role is also cross-functional collaboration, working closely with different teams to make sure everyone is aligned on where we're headed and why. Then afternoons often involve strategic planning, roadmap reviews, or stakeholder updates.

I also spend a lot of my time talking directly with our customers, understanding their needs, and translating that into our roadmap and wider vision. 

The approach we're taking in the regulatory space is to remove mundane manual processes and give users the ability to focus on tasks that require more strategic thinking. I think a lot of our customers are definitely talking about AI and how it can help them. I think, from our perspective, it is how can we use AI to bolster or support their day-to-day processes.

For example, the AI Importer that we've introduced means users can import unstructured protocol data into TrialScope Disclose without having to manually enter it. So it speeds up that process, which means that person's now free to tackle more complicated tasks. It’s areas such as this that are our initial focus and where I can see AI really helping our customers.

The general consensus I certainly hear whenever I go to conferences and talking to different sponsors is that AI is not quite there yet from a generative/content creation perspective. That doesn't mean it can't help, but it is more useful as a starting point or a stepping stone.

Based on what feedback we're getting, customers view AI as a very good support tool, but there always needs to be a robust review process involved, which is the approach we take in our development.

There are a lot of exciting things happening within the Regulatory portfolio, the biggest focus currently being on the complete end-to-end rebuild of TrialScope Disclose.

We are evolving TrialScope Disclose so that we are enabled to deliver the customer needs of the future, while also enhancing the known and trusted solution available today. We are starting to share what this will look like with customers, and they’re at the heart of how the solution evolves.

In addition, we are also continuing to evolves the Global Disclosure Form, continuously delivering customer-driven enhancements and growing the scope of registries the solution covers.

We are also working on a new redesign of TrialScope Intelligence that will be available soon. We have evolved the look and feel of the solution significantly, making it even easier for customers to access and action the detailed content within it. Additionally, we are developing a new module for the solution that delves into the wider clinical trial regulations, allowing us to provide complete regulatory lifecycle intelligence from application through to disclosure.

And, most recently, we relaunched TrialSummaries.com with a completely new interface. It’s much easier for patients to find and access details and results from studies they participated in.

There’s a lot happening in the Regulatory portfolio right now, and 2027 is shaping up to be even more exciting.

It’s the collaborative nature of the role, working with people both internally and with our customers as well. It's fun because you come together and you'll have a problem you need to solve and everyone has a different perspective. And its that's the bit I enjoy the most: problem solving as a group.

I also really enjoy getting to spend time with our customers/sponsors and understanding their use cases. What is it that we can address? How is it evolving? How are things changing? How can we evolve the solutions to align to their needs?

Working within a regulated, validated product environment is probably the most challenging aspect, and it comes with its own unique complexities.

Because the information processed by our products is ultimately submitted to regulatory bodies, accuracy and control are non-negotiable. That means we follow a rigorous validation process — testing and retesting within a completely ring-fenced environment before anything reaches our customers. On top of that, our customers then conduct their own rounds of testing, and we're audited multiple times a year by their auditors. We have to demonstrate control at every step.

It's a process we've refined and execute well, but it does require significant time and resources. Naturally, that creates some constraints on pace and capacity. If I'm honest, there are moments where you think about how much more we could deliver without that overhead. But then you remember why it exists. And it absolutely should. Our customers depend on that rigor to ensure their regulatory submissions are accurate. It's challenging, but it's also what makes what we do meaningful.

I like to travel. I went to Thailand over Christmas and I went to Japan earlier this year, for cherry blossom season, which was amazing. I like to explore new places and cultures, also I enjoy just sitting on a beach or by a pool and relaxing.

I also enjoy reading — sci-fi, fantasy, fiction, non-fiction — and spending time with friends and family. I also used to fence, though I haven’t done it for a little while.

One thing is the continued evolving regulations and alignment of regulations we've seen with the UK. Globally, we see roughly two new registries per year, so new regulations are growing.

AI will continue to be a key driver in in the regulatory space for the foreseeable future, so it will be interesting to see its impact and how it evolves.

The other one we're all hoping for is EU Clinical Trial Information System (CTIS) results. I think that's going to be a huge thing for a lot of sponsors. I'm sure there'll be some form of transition period and retirement of the old results. So I think that's probably going to be a big focus. We can hope anyway, because everyone's waiting for it.