In the late 1980s, after raising 3 children on a cattle ranch in a small Texas town, Patricia “Pat” Bingham returned to the workforce. She joined a Dallas-based, meeting planning company that primarily organized incentive trips around major sporting events including the Masters, the Super Bowl, and even the Olympics.
By the mid 1990s, as Investigators’ meetings became more prominent in the life sciences industry, Searle Pharmaceutical, an organization Pat had planned trips for previously, requested the company organize an Investigators’ meeting for them. Pat immediately volunteered as she enjoyed the business nature of Investigators’ meetings more so than the incentive trips she normally planned.
Sadly, in 1995, Pat’s husband, Lewis Bingham, was diagnosed with non-small lung cancer. After learning he had 6-18 months to live, Pat resigned to be at home with him. However, soon after Pat’s resignation, Pharmaco, an Austin-based CRO later acquired by PPD, called to ask if Pat, based on her previous experience, would organize an important Investigators’ meeting for them.
Lewis and Pat decided this would be a good opportunity, giving Pat something to focus on after Lewis’ passing, while also providing financial stability and an outlet to do something she enjoyed.
In late 1995, Pat founded Meeting Protocol from a spare bedroom in their house. In early 1996, she executed her first meeting at the Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach.
Not long after, Pat’s children joined the family business. In 1997, Pat’s oldest son, Brett, joined Meeting Protocol. Her daughter, Paige, followed in 1999 to open the London office. In 2000, Pat’s youngest son, Brian joined, and together, they changed the company name to Meeting Protocol Worldwide to reflect its now global nature.
As technology evolved, so did the family business. Meeting Protocol no longer organized only face-to-face meetings, but also offered hybrid and virtual capabilities. In 2012, Meeting Protocol developed a virtual module training platform to securely house sensitive, meeting-related documents for their clients.
In 2016, after a client request to arrange travel services for patients participating in clinical trials, Meeting Protocol’s leadership team founded Scout Clinical. Scout grew out of a passion to “make it easier for patients to stick with it” and has provided patient reimbursement and travel services to over 900 studies across the globe, to date.
Atlas Clinical Academy, a learning management system designed to collaborate with clinical trials on a variety of levels, was officially founded in 2018 and continues to grow and evolve to “keep your people on the same page” within the life sciences.
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