Author: Will Wing, Director of Product, Travel at Suvoda
Snapshot:
Getting a patient to a clinical trial visit requires real coordination. Patients may be living with serious illness, traveling across borders, navigating language barriers, or managing mobility limitations that make standard booking services inadequate. Caregivers need support. Receipts need to be captured. And none of it should require a patient to pay out of pocket and wait to be reimbursed.
For years, sites have served as de facto travel agencies on top of their clinical responsibilities. The administrative cost was real, and so was the human cost. Often, patients who find that travel logistics are too difficult may simply drop out.
Greenphire Travel is a global clinical trial travel solution built to address this problem. It handles end-to-end travel and logistics for patients and caregivers throughout a study, with upfront funding by the sponsor and dedicated service infrastructure operating in more than 50 countries.
Greenphire Travel covers the full range of travel and logistics a patient might need to get to a clinical trial visit and return home safely. That includes rideshare and car service, rail and bus, domestic and international air travel, hotels and long-term lodging, meal delivery, and travel documentation including visas and passports. For patients with additional needs, the service extends to wheelchair-accessible vehicles, specialty car and van services, translation and interpretation, and other bespoke arrangements based on protocol and patient requirements.
Costs for travel arrangements are funded upfront by the sponsor and managed through the Suvoda Platform, so patients, caregivers, and sites face no out-of-pocket costs. Sites initiate requests through the portal. The Greenphire Travel team handles the rest.
Rideshare is integrated directly into the platform. In the United States, sites can book a Lyft for a patient in seconds without the patient needing the Lyft app. Patients also have a self-booking option if preferred. Uber Health is supported where available, and Bolt operates across the European Union. Ride status is visible in real time.
More than 70 concierge coordinators are stationed across 40+ countries, providing high-touch, localized, one-on-one support in patients’ native languages. Each patient is assigned a personal coordinator who is available 24/7 and manages their travel from initial itinerary planning through post-visit follow-up, including receipt capture and reimbursements for incidentals such as meals, childcare, or pet care that arise along the way.
These coordinators develop long-term familiarity with individual patients over the course of a trial, understand the local landscape, provide compassionate support, and handle the complexities that arise when plans change. The service includes 24/7/365 availability for urgent or last-minute itinerary changes.
Caregiver support is an important part of the service, as many patients, particularly those with serious illness, mobility limitations, or cognitive impairments, cannot reasonably travel alone. Suvoda coordinators routinely arrange travel and lodging for the people supporting the patient.
In rare disease, oncology, and CNS studies, patients are often traveling long distances to specialized trial sites, remaining enrolled for years, and managing conditions that require an additional level of logistical care.
Greenphire Travel’s concierge model is well suited to this context. Coordinators can arrange wheelchair-accessible vehicles and accommodations, oxygen support, and other tailored services for patients with serious or debilitating conditions. Greenphire Travel has supported more than 8,400 sites across 2,000+ trials in more than 50 countries.
“Greenphire Travel is fundamentally the backbone of our travel program. No matter the need or request, our support team has the regional expertise to handle all travel requirements for our participants.”
Through the Suvoda App, patients have a single place to manage their participation. When enabled for a study, they can view travel itineraries including flights, hotel, and rideshare status, book car rides directly, access appointments and questionnaires, submit receipts, and view payments and balances. Rather than receiving disconnected notifications from separate systems, patients see their trial in one coherent experience.
Greenphire Travel operates within the Suvoda Platform, which shares a single data layer across RTSM, eCOA, Greenphire Patient Payments, and all other products. For sites, the workflow is straightforward: input patient and visit information into the portal, send the request, and the Greenphire Travel team manages the arrangements.
For sponsors and CROs, Greenphire Travel includes spend reporting with centralized funding and travel booking data, providing visibility into costs at the study and program level. The platform’s privacy architecture is built with regulatory requirements in mind: the client-facing portal is blinded of personally identifiable information, and data storage is localized to meet regional residency requirements.
Greenphire Travel is frequently deployed alongside Greenphire Patient Payments, Suvoda’s participant payment and reimbursement product.
Greenphire Travel handles pre-arranged logistics: the flights, the hotel, the car. Greenphire Patient Payments handles the broader financial side of participation, including stipends for time and effort and reimbursement for expenses outside pre-arranged travel. Payments are executed through the Suvoda Platform and delivered to participants in their local currency, via their preferred method: ClinCard debit card or virtual card, direct bank deposit, or digital wallet.
Together, the two products address the financial and logistical dimensions of patient participation. Patients and caregivers have a single point of contact, a single app, and a program that covers both getting to the visit and being compensated for the effort.
Trial teams may underestimate the operational weight of travel coordination until they are deep into a study. By that point, sites may be stretched thin, patients frustrated, and dropout may already be happening. Sites deserve a well-designed travel program, with global reach, a dedicated service model, and the platform integration to handle complexity at scale.
Greenphire Travel has been supporting clinical trials and their patients for over 15 years with a team that understands local requirements and the capacity to manage the unexpected. For sponsors and CROs evaluating how to support their patients through a study, that combination of technology and human service can be invaluable.
Will Wing
Director of Product, Travel, Suvoda