ASPIRE-ICU Study Reaches the Targeted 30 Sites!

With selecting the 4th site in Bulgaria this month, the ASPIRE-ICU study has now selected the targeted 30 sites for participation in the study.

To ensure the pan-European continent is represented in this study, sites across the four sub-regions of Europe (as described by the United Nations) have been selected (Table and Figure 1).

The site selection committee was a joint undertaking composed of UMCU, CLIN-Net, LAB-Net and MedImmune. Selection started more than 1 year ago with the pre-selection of sites within the CLIN-Net and LAB-Net networks. This was done by means of discussions with national network coordinators and sharing experiences between study teams. It also involved an analysis of information acquired by COMBACTE on a large and growing number of European hospitals aligned with laboratories in the network management system.

Several challenges were encountered and important lessons were learned during the site selection process of this study, such as:
1.) The number of eligible patients across Europe;
2.) Obtaining informed consent from incapacitated patients requires a court-appointed legal representative in some countries;
3.) The importance of streamlining clinical and laboratory feasibility efforts;
4.) Competing studies that might impact recruitment.

Nevertheless, the team is very confident that the selected 30 suitable and dedicated sites will make the ASPIRE-ICU study a success!

The team is looking forward to continue the collaboration with these sites in the COMBACTE project.