In the early 2000s, Kerri Weingard, ANP, and Mitchell Efros, MD, founded and managed one of the largest Phase I–III clinical research centers on Long Island. During this time, they uncovered a troubling and surprisingly common issue: some participants were secretly enrolling in multiple clinical trials at the same time.

Even patients they had known and trusted for years were attempting to manipulate their way into more than one study — sometimes motivated by financial incentives, other times by a desire to gain access to medical care. The problem typically came to light only when mistakes were made, such as a subject returning the wrong medication bottle from a different study, or presenting duplicate trial packets that revealed they had enrolled in the same study at two different sites.

As seasoned investigators, Kerri and Mitchell recognized the seriousness of this issue. Duplicate enrollment compromised subject safety, jeopardized data integrity, and frustrated research staff who lacked any effective tools to detect or prevent it.

Verified Clinical Trials was founded out of necessity — not by commercial software developers, but by experienced research professionals who lived these challenges every day. They designed a one-touch solution that minimizes burden for site staff while delivering unparalleled insight into a participant’s research history. For the first time, investigators and study teams had a practical way to comply with one of the most fundamental protocol requirements — confirming that a subject had not participated in another trial within the past 30 days (or as specified).

This groundbreaking approach introduced an entirely new step in clinical trial conduct. By empowering sponsors, CROs, and sites to instantly verify trial history, VCT improves subject safety, protects data integrity, reduces placebo response, and streamlines operations across the research ecosystem.

What began as a site-level frustration has since grown into a transformative solution embraced worldwide. Today, VCT is the largest and most trusted ISO 27001–certified subject verification platform — a truly global, cross-sponsor, cross-therapeutic safeguard enhancing compliance, safety, and efficiency in clinical trials everywhere.