The People Behind the Products: Will Franco

My role is supporting sponsors and CROs with their patient recruitment and engagement challenges to help scope the objectives that they have with their specific trials and support them at every step, from feasibility all the way to the enrollment of patients. That's the objective of my role, but internally I'm basically a bridge between the client and the rest of the organization. I sit with those teams to help discover the needs of a client or understand exactly what they are trying to achieve and then coordinate internally to be able to deliver a solution tailored to these specific needs.

Unlike many of the people I’ve worked with in the clinical research industry, who come either from research or working specifically with clinical data solutions, I started my career in the military. I was a career Marine; I served eight years and started my career working in talent development and human resources. I was always very keen on technology; I always liked innovation and finding ways we can improve processes internally to make things go much faster and to be more efficient and streamlined.

The military gave me a strong foundation of working with people. It's an environment where you don't have the option to quit. You have to adapt. You have to work really well with teams across multiple departments. The military gave me the grit, discipline, and cross-functional skill set to adapt quickly and work effectively across different teams and challenges.

From there I transitioned to work with technology. In both my undergraduate and master’s studies, I focused heavily on firm internationalization and strategies to help companies expand into global markets. I had the opportunity to work for a leading cement manufacturing company, an experience I’m extremely grateful for. I was hired to support the company’s internationalization efforts and was selected to participate in an SAP training program, where I eventually became an internal SAP consultant supporting global implementations across South America, the United States, the Caribbean, and Central America. I worked closely on designing and implementing business processes within SAP’s sales and distribution modules, while also partnering heavily with the organization’s finance operations. That experience became a critical foundation for my transition into the technology space, as it gave me exposure to both the operational and technical sides of the business.

I then went on to work as an account executive. So being in sales, selling HR and talent development technology, learning development technology, that's how I came to the industry. I was selling technology to an organization providing services to the pharmaceutical industry. Before COVID, we’d heard of clinical research and trials, but it wasn't something people were very well aware of until they started talking in the media about the vaccines, clinical trials. I just became fascinated with everything about research and started digging into research and the process of bringing a drug to market. By the time I had to present to the executive team at this company to sell the technology, I sounded like I came from the industry because I had spent three to four months just reading about everything related to the industry.

I ended up being scouted from that project to help drive the adoption of their technology in clinical research sites. I was supporting clinical research sites not only with their technology but aligning their internal processes to that technology. So I became very embedded in the way sites were operating and how they managed a clinical trial all the way from the proposal procurement piece to getting a trial.

I had to learn how to read a protocol, how to understand a schedule of activities, understand in depth what the inclusion/exclusion [I/E] criteria were. Plus, I learned all the components of the research and then every phase of the clinical trial process from prescreening a patient all the way to randomization and providing the documenting source data and bringing to the EDC [electronic data capture] and all the end processes.

Eventually the opportunity came to join Citeline. I think all the experiences from working in the military and that cross-functional, mission-first attitude has contributed to my success in helping our clients. And everything else as well — the complexity of implementing technology and being a consultant in an organization to understand exactly what is needed to match a solution to a specific problem — has helped me better support our clients.

There’s really no such thing as a “typical day” in solutions consulting because we’re involved in every stage of the sales and solutioning process. Most of my day is spent partnering directly with clients to understand the objectives and challenges behind their research programs and clinical protocols, then helping design tailored solutions to solve those problems.

Those conversations go far beyond patient engagement, recruitment, and feasibility. A big part of my role is understanding the broader strategic needs of the organization and connecting clients with the right experts and capabilities across the business. For example, a client may come to us wanting to improve enrollment for a trial, but the conversation can quickly expand into competitive intelligence, market dynamics, or understanding how a competing therapy is performing in a specific indication.

The rest of my day is focused on execution: preparing presentations and strategic recommendations, developing proposals and contracts, coordinating cross-functional teams, and managing the constant flow of client communication that keeps projects moving forward.

At the end of the day, what motivates me most is helping people solve meaningful problems, supporting companies in advancing their drug development and growth, and ultimately helping bring life-saving treatments to patients faster. I feel incredibly privileged to work for an organization that allows me to contribute to that mission every day. What I like about Citeline and Norstella [Citeline’s parent company] is that we are a true end-to-end partner to the pharmaceutical industry. In the five to six years that I've been in the industry, I’ve heard many organizations describe themselves as end-to-end partners. What stands out to me about Citeline is the depth and integration of our capabilities, all built around a core foundation of gold-standard data. From strategy and feasibility to patient engagement and recruitment, we’re able a true end-to-end partner that connects the full picture in a way that is both comprehensive and highly specialized from a data and insights perspective.

This is an organization with some of the most talented individuals that I've ever worked with. I believe you work in an organization because of the people, because we spend more time at work than we do with our families. You have to like the people and teams you work with, to stay and be committed to what you do. You may have a great mission in your organization, you may have a great objective, but at the end of the day, it's people you work with. I like coming to work every day because I believe I work with some of the smartest people in the industry, and I learn from them every day.

Just to give you an example, this is one of the few places where I've had the opportunity to work on a day-to-day basis with data scientists. I came from knowing what real-world data [RWD] was and how it was practical in the pharmaceutical industry. Now, I understand how we can run a cohort analysis and translate raw data into an actionable deliverable for our clients. The people I work with are not only extremely talented, but also very willing to share their knowledge with the rest of the team. We have multiple PhDs on our team. I was shocked how willing they were to sit down with you and teach you, share their knowledge for the common good of the team, for the benefit of the company and, ultimately, drive research forward. When we go to market quickly, people who so desperately need these medications have access to them.

One of the challenges we face daily for the solutions consulting team is multiple stakeholders with different needs and challenges in a project we're working on. This especially happens when we're working with very large pharma companies where they bring 10 to 15 people into the conversation. So it could be challenges with the protocol design or what's preventing them from recruiting patients or reducing the burden of and work on the sites. There are a lot of different components.

We not only have the solutions, but we also have the people in the organization, our teammates who come together to help build a holistic approach to every challenge so that we find a solution for every stakeholder in that conversation. If it's someone with protocol problems, we can streamline it through Protocol SmartDesign, and feasibility or recruitment challenges can be addressed through Citeline PatientMatch.

A major focus for me right now is continuing to evolve and scale our data-driven recruitment solutions, particularly around Citeline PatientMatch. Over the past year, we’ve seen strong momentum across multiple sponsor programs, especially in complex and hard-to-recruit studies, and a big part of my role is helping clients translate real-world data and technology into practical recruitment strategies that actually work operationally at the site level.

A lot of the work I’m doing today centers around optimizing how we identify, engage, and activate patients and providers more efficiently. That includes collaborating closely with sponsors, CROs, delivery teams, product teams, and data science groups to refine algorithms, improve site alignment strategies, strengthen reporting visibility, and create more measurable recruitment outcomes for clients. We’re also focused on making the experience more seamless for research sites and giving sponsors better real-time visibility into engagement, referral activity, and overall return on investment.

Another major area of focus is helping clients think more strategically about recruitment beyond just one solution. Many of the conversations I lead involve understanding broader organizational challenges across feasibility, patient engagement, HCP awareness, referral network development, and portfolio-level recruitment strategies. We spend a lot of time listening to what clients need, understanding what has and hasn’t worked for them historically, and then tailoring integrated solutions that combine data, technology, and operational strategy to support their development goals more effectively. It’s about being the voice of the customer for the organization.

It's already playing a key role. Citeline is known as the gold standard for clinical trial intelligence in the industry, and I think it's amazing what we've done over the past few years, combining the robust proprietary data we own with real-world datasets. Today we provide some of the most comprehensive data solutions in the industry. That said, we would never have been able to achieve that without AI.

With Citeline PatientMatch, one of the most innovative solutions in our portfolio, AI is key. Many years ago — actually not that long ago, talking about maybe two or three years ago, but now we live in light years so we are moving kind of fast — sites would take a protocol, which is a very complex document over 100 pages, grab I/E criteria and then have to go through EMR [electronic medical records] to find patients. By scrolling through these medical records, if you're a large organization, you have a study coordinator who’s responsible for this. If you're mid-sized, you have a recruitment team going through medical records or contacting physicians to help them refer patients. But this takes a lot of time.

With Citeline PatientMatch, we’re able to bring AI natural language processing [NLP] to tap into the data and identify a patient that is highly qualified for a trial. By combining the sponsor’s unique protocol criteria and site locations with our datasets using AI models, we’re able to pinpoint protocol-matched patients and alert the sites that they exist. This reduces the time of patient identification from days to literally, it's in my inbox and now I just have to find out who this patient is and we can get them screened for the trial.

AI plays a key role, especially in rare disease and in oncology, because we need to find a treatment fairly fast for these patients. If we don't identify these patients quickly, we’ve missed the window of opportunity for them to participate in the trial. We don't hear how challenging it is for someone to participate in the trial even if they want to participate. A lot of this is due to those timelines.

Whether it’s a first line of therapy, two lines of therapy, or treatment-naive patients, for them to participate in the trial, we need to find them before they actually go into any kind of chemotherapy regimen or any radiation therapy. So we're looking at a timeframe that could be, what, maybe one to three weeks? With AI, we've been able to tap into EHRs, EMRs, lab and biomarker data, doctor notes, and more.

Leveraging that AI NLP, we're able to find the specific patient the sponsor is looking for. On the other side, that patient who's also looking for a trial can benefit by having someone identify them before they have to identify themselves. So there is the opportunity on both ends to accelerate that recruitment, but ultimately going back to our mission, bring the care and treatment to the patient much faster.

There is obviously a lot of talk around AI and also data-driven recruitment. The industry has been scarred by direct-to-patient recruitment. I'm not saying that it's bad thing; actually, direct-to-patient recruitment is great for certain indications. What I’m saying is we support multiple indications direct to patient.

In patient recruitment, it can be easy to self-screen for a type 2 diabetes, dermatology, or obesity study. For those kinds of studies, direct-to-patient campaigns are successful. But when we get into complex protocols and complex I/E criteria, direct-to-patient campaigns create site burden. Why? Because you’ll get 300 referrals for an oncology study where maybe one or two were qualified, so the site is inundated with 300 referrals that they can't do anything with.

What does the site do? They only have a couple of choices. Do I spend my whole day trying to qualify a patient that is not qualified or do I spend most of my time scrubbing through my EMR and EHR, which goes back to the last point where AI is solving this problem. That said, the industry is moving to data-driven recruitment as the solution. I think that, aside from AI, it's one of the biggest trends.

There also are a lot of conversations around smart visibility. Typically the way visibility worked for most organizations was based on relationships. I thought we had moved past that, especially for organizations working with the same institutions for a while. But I hear it all the time, even with large pharmaceutical companies who say, for instance, they picked 80 sites. We ask, Why did you pick these 80 sites?’ Their response: ‘Well, because I just happened to be working with them for the past five years and they've been good partners.’ We reply: ‘That's great. You can continue working with them. However, do they have the patient population? Do they have access to those referral networks?’

I see that smart feasibility is becoming a trend as well. Sponsors are starting to invest in feasibility teams, not just those who have the relationships with the sites or know the sites or know the research process. They also want people who know and understand data so that they can make data-driven decisions in that feasibility process. We're also starting to see that many of our recruitment projects are being tied with visibility projects.

My top priority is spending time with my wife and daughter. My family time is what I value the most.

I do like music as well. I play percussion, so occasionally I bring out my drums and just play. I like all types of music. I like to explore new rhythms or just pick a country and see what they listen to in this country. Since I was a teenager, I've been very driven by music, by world music. Because in most of world music, the foundation is the percussion. I enjoy understanding the rhythms and then going back to track where that came from. It's huge for me.

But I would say if I had to pick one, it's definitely spending time with my wife and daughter, and those experiences we build together. We make it a point to do something significant every month that builds a memory, whether it's traveling somewhere or doing something special. About two to three years ago, instead of having just digital photos, we started building a collection of photos of those significant moments and documenting them, and it's great. My daughter is 16, and she enjoys going out with us; the fact that she's an only child kind of helps. These experiences have helped us build a very strong relationship with her.

I’m just grateful for the opportunity to be in this company and work with such a magnificent team. I think we're made up of a bunch of great individuals and I’m looking forward to what we're going to do next.