Chiara Zani

Dr. Chiara Zani


Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

3Years (2024-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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16 May 2024 in Current Oncology
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
LGLorenzo Gasperoni
Lorenzo Gasperoni
CMCarla Masini
Carla Masini
GTGiada Toscano
Giada Toscano
ACAlessandro Cafaro
Alessandro Cafaro
CZChiara Zani
Chiara Zani
SCSara Cecco
Sara Cecco
Investigational drug services need to be organised in a structured approach, especially for sites with a large number of ongoing clinical trials. The aim of this study was to develop a tool to assess the complexity of pharmacy involvement in a sponsored oncology clinical trial. Categorisation into ordinal complexity categories was used to assess the complexity of the clinical trials for consistent pharmacy grant applications. The 15 items of the tool were divided into three sections, and individual item scores were agreed upon among four pharmacists with experience in the conduct of clinical trials at two different centres. A final version of the tool, named Pharm-CAT, was approved. The pharmacists were instructed to use Pharm-CAT to assign a score to each new sponsored trial. To determine the cut-offs for the complexity categories, the scores were sorted in ascending order and the cut-offs corresponding to the first and third tertiles of the score distribution were selected. To verify the reproducibility of the results, Pharm-CAT was applied by two pharmacists independently for each trial. Pharm-CAT proved to be user-friendly. Sixty clinical trials were evaluated and a total of 120 scores were recorded. Low-complexity scores ranged from 0 to 19, medium-complexity scores ranged from 20 to 25, and high-complexity scores were 26 or higher. The average score recorded was 22.88 points. Prospective multicentre validation of Pharm-CAT is needed to confirm its applicability.