eSource to EDC Integration Is Finally Here: What It Means for Sites

By Rick Ward

A recap of the CRIO x SCRS webinar

Sites have been asking for it for years: a way to enter data once and have it flow where it needs to go, without the copy-paste grind between source documents and sponsor EDC systems. On a recent webinar co-hosted by CRIO and the Society for Clinical Research Sites (SCRS), a panel of site, sponsor, CRO, and technology leaders came together to talk about why eSource-to-EDC integration is finally gaining real traction — and what it means for the people doing the work at the site level.

The session, “eSource to EDC Integration Is Finally Here: What It Means for Sites,” was moderated by Rick Ward, Chief Commercial Officer at CRIO, with a panel that intentionally spanned the ecosystem:

• Greg Manning, VP of Study Execution, Alliance Clinical Network
• Joe Dustin, Senior Director of Digital Clinical Development, Sanofi
• Andrew Miles, Director of Clinical Operations, Parexel
• Tess Duke, Strategic Adoption Lead, Medidata

SCRS opened and closed the session, thanking members and previewing the 2026 Global Site Solutions Summit, taking place October 15–18 in Orlando. Below are the key takeaways from the discussion in between.

EHR vs. eSource: a distinction that matters more than the terminology suggests

The panel kicked off by untangling a point of confusion that comes up constantly in the industry: the difference between EHR-to-EDC integration and eSource-to-EDC integration. As Greg Manning explained, electronic health records are built for physician practices managing patient care, while dedicated research sites and site networks typically rely on purpose-built eSource and CTMS platforms instead. From a sponsor’s perspective, the two can look interchangeable on a questionnaire — but the underlying systems, and what they enable, are quite different.

Medidata’s Tess Duke added helpful context here: Medidata’s own integration work started with EHR-to-Rave connectivity, but the team quickly discovered how many research sites don’t use an EHR at all — because their entire operation is built around running trials, not delivering standard-of-care medicine. That realization is what drove Medidata to extend integration to CRIO, in order to stay agnostic to the technology a given site actually uses.

The real cost of manual data entry

Sanofi’s Joe Dustin framed the current moment as past the “does this work?” phase and now squarely in the “how do we scale it?” phase — across larger site populations, global regions, and widely varying levels of site technology maturity.

Greg Manning put a finer point on the cost side of that equation. At smaller sites, every hour spent on data entry is an hour not spent seeing patients. At larger, centralized organizations, that burden shifts to dedicated data entry staff — often adding one or two full-time roles per site, layered with the risk of transcription errors and the downstream cost of resolving queries. It’s a cost that rarely shows up as its own budget line, but it’s real, and it scales with study complexity.

Why the urgency now?

Several forces are converging to push eSource-to-EDC connectivity from “nice to have” to priority, according to the panel:

• Sponsor cost pressure. Reducing source data verification, monitoring time, and query volume all map back to real cost savings — while supporting broader company goals like cutting drug development timelines and expanding pipeline capacity without expanding headcount.
• Data quality. Every panelist returned to this theme. Eliminating manual transcription removes an entire category of error, and real-time edit checks built into eSource systems catch problems before they ever reach the EDC.
• Site resourcing. When source and EDC are unified, sites can spend time focused on patients.

As Rick Ward observed, the fact that nearly every argument for this shift ultimately ties back to data quality is a strong signal that it’s not a passing trend — it’s foundational to where the industry is headed.

Paper isn’t going away overnight — and that’s okay

Not every site is there yet, and the panel was candid about that. Andrew Miles noted that plenty of viable sites still rely on paper source, and the goal isn’t to force everyone onto identical systems — it’s interoperability, so that whatever systems sites and sponsors use can talk to each other. Greg Manning shared a personal anecdote from his time as a site owner: a sponsor once told him, bluntly, “you can get on the train or be left behind.” His site onboarded an eSource platform within the year. The broader point the panel landed on: sponsors increasingly need to plan for a hybrid reality — some sites fully digital, some still on paper — and build strategies that meet sites where they are rather than waiting for 100% adoption that may never arrive.

What does a fully connected site look like in five years?

Asked to imagine the site of the future, panelists converged on a few common threads:

• Broader, deeper integrations. Medidata’s Tess Duke described expanding eSource integrations to more countries and more systems, while minimizing the change management burden on sites adopting new technology.
• Enter data once. Andrew Miles’s vision was simple: data entered a single time flows everywhere it needs to go, cutting duplicate work for sites and reducing review time for monitors.
• Standards and validation. Joe Dustin pointed to the need for continued progress on transport and data standards (like CDISC’s USDM format and ODM), and raised a provocative question: should there be a formal “stamp of approval” for eSource systems, similar to the ONC certification that exists for EHRs? Enterprise platforms deployed across many sites, he argued, could make validation dramatically more scalable than site-by-site system audits.
• Centrally built, protocol-driven source. Greg Manning’s “wish list” was a source template built centrally at the protocol level, in partnership with EDC platforms, so that every site starts from a consistent, sponsor-validated foundation rather than building source documentation independently.

Who pays for the next step — going beyond the EDC?

Rick Ward pushed the panel on a harder question: as the industry starts looking past eSource-to-EDC and toward getting data all the way to sponsors’ analytics and data lake environments, who bears that cost? The consensus was that this can’t be a site-level differentiator — it has to be a sponsor- and platform-led investment, built on consistent field mapping from the very beginning, with trusted, validated pathways rather than ad hoc, site-employed third-party tools.

Practical advice for each part of the ecosystem

When asked what listeners should actually do next, the panel offered concrete, role-specific guidance:

For sites: Ask. Sponsors want to say yes, but many don’t yet know how. Get your validation documentation in order in advance, and be ready with a short list of the technologies you already use so sponsors can factor that in during feasibility conversations.

For sponsors: Meet sites where they are. Build a menu of integration options, be transparent about capabilities during feasibility, and don’t penalize sites for lacking technology today — but recognize that offering a clear path forward benefits everyone.

For CROs: Keep an open mind and communicate early and often, particularly during feasibility, about what’s technically possible.

For technology vendors: Reach out proactively. Tess Duke noted that many sites already have access to available integrations at no additional cost and simply haven’t activated them yet.

Joe Dustin also had pointed advice for sponsors and biotechs still on the sidelines: come up with a segmentation strategy for sites based on their technology readiness, rather than waiting for 100% of sites to be on a single system before making decisions.

The bottom line

Every panelist, in their own way, arrived at the same conclusion: this only works if the industry moves together. As Andrew Miles put it in closing, the risk isn’t that the technology won’t be ready — it’s that sponsors, sites, CROs, and vendors will keep working in silos instead of as partners. The panel agreed that progress won’t be perfect, and it won’t happen all at once. But starting somewhere — automating some of the data, onboarding some of the sites, learning as you go — is how the industry gets from where it is today to the fully connected, lower-burden, higher-quality future everyone on the call is working toward.

Learn more

• CRIO’s Central eSource^® System — how centrally built, protocol-driven source templates work in practice
• eSource vs. EDC: A New Era for Clinical Trials
• The Hidden Cost of Downstream Data Cleaning: Why Smart Sponsors Build Quality at the Source
• Schedule a Demo with CRIO

Thank you to SCRS for co-hosting and to our panelists for a candid, wide-ranging conversation. SCRS members can learn more about SCRS’s upcoming events, including the 2026 Global Site Solutions Summit (October 15–18, Orlando), at myscrs.org.