TECH OUTLOOK 8MAY - 2022Clinical trials are an extremely important part of the drug development process and are crucial in developing both safe and effective drugs. At their best they can help understand the significance of a potential new drug and help advance the field of medicine, without compromising patient safety. However, they are not without their challenges.Clinical trials are research studies in which one or more human subjects are assigned to one or more medical interventions to evaluate the effects of those interventions on health-related biomedical or behavioral outcomes. Unfortunately, these trials, are notorious for their cost, length and high failure rate. Traditional clinical trials can cost millions of dollars, take many years to complete, and face increasingly stringent demands from regulators. While they are a necessary part of the drug and treatment development process, they do introduce pain points to the industry that can slow down the time to market. Part of the problem is rooted in finding patients to participate.In fact, 86% of clinical trials fail to reach recruitment goals within their targeted timeframe and there has been a 29% drop in trial enrollments since 2014. Simply finding eligible patients for a trial is becoming increasingly difficult. Recruitment and retention alone represent a $3.2B cost center for the biopharmaceutical industry that is expected to reach $5.3B by 2030.As many as half of the patients in any trial don't even receive the drug or therapy that is being tested, as they are the control arm against which the success of failure of the test is based. But they still need to be recruited and managed as part of the trial, costing organizers both time and money.These kinds of associated costs have also been blamed for driving up the costs of drugs to end consumers. The median estimated cost of a clinical trial was $19 million as of 2018, and the industry spends $80 billion as a whole on clinical trials each year despite very low success rates. It's been estimated that each month that the drug development process is shortened is worth $25 million for the average sponsor.Optimizing Clinical Trials: Leveraging Technology to Improve Drug DevelopmentIN MY OPINIONBy Craig Herron, Managing Director, iSelect Fund (NYSE:BHIL)It won't happen overnight, but technologies like those mentioned will help support new approaches to clinical trials that will drive the medical field forward for years to come
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