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# Bob Temple on Covid Impact on Meetings With Industry
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/bob-temple-on-covid-impact-on-meetings-with-industry/
- Published: 2020-11-17T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T16:36:39.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: Drugs, #legacy-id-D5148107

FDA meetings with industry on product development issues are suffering from fewer interactions and participation due to Covid-19 and the necessary move to virtual presentations and discussions, CDER deputy Center director for clinical science **Bob Temple** told the virtual Prevision Policy/Friends of Cancer Research Biopharma Congress last month. Comparing in-person meetings with virtual/Zoom meetings, Temple said that “when you're there in the room, there are more interactions.” He said that despite having the required/requested personnel on the virtual meeting, the number of people talking is reduced and the meetings are “narrower.” The same can be said with internal agency deliberations that are now virtual during the pandemic.

Regarding virtual advisory committee meetings, Temple said these too could be suffering in terms of gaining needed scientific and expert advice. “I think, as a general matter, it matters when people are in the room and they look at each other and they talk to each other and they think of things they didn't think about before — mutual presence matters,” he told conference viewers. “A typical advisory committee meeting would have 25 people around the table, and they would interact. And I think there's likely to be less of that, but it's hard to put your finger on it, and maybe the important stuff still comes out... but I'm worried about it.”

Temple said he is looking forward to when the pandemic is over and he is back in the office. He, like most FDAers, is working from home and has been since March. “I could go in if it were necessary, but it turns out, you know, nowadays you can do almost everything online,” he said. And of course you can do a review online, and it doesn't matter where the computer is, so those things are not that different. What’s different, I think is the interaction. I know people are getting used to interacting online and all that, but I don't think it's quite the same. It helps to actually see people who are in the conference room with you... But I think there's something lost when you're not together, and I miss that. Maybe we'll come to learn better how to do this since this isn't going away anytime soon, but I think the contact and seeing people's faces is helpful and so I miss it.”

Asked about Covid-19 damaging drug development and clinical trials, Temple focused on the positive impact of CDER’s pre-pandemic interest in seeing more trials where people could be treated locally and observed locally and phone in their observations. “Obviously it’s been totally magnified by these events because people can't come into the clinic anymore,” he said “And the advantage of these dispersed trials is enormous. You get a much broader population. We've known for a long time that it's hard to get the elderly into a clinic, but you want them in your trials... So there’s something to be learned from that and I think that’s good, and we are learning more about collecting relevant information by phone and whatever, or even having the investigator telephone the person to learn about it or do things online. I think those are good trends.”