Decentralized Clinical Trials: Quantifying Costs, Benefits Could Drive Adoption, Reduce Disruption

31 Oct 2023

Routine inclusion of approaches such as local assessments and remote monitoring could reduce patient burden and avoid protocol deviations, but industry needs to see a return on investment, in the form of easier recruitment, better diversity and/or faster studies, experts said.

Flat screen TVs debuted at a high cost but became more affordable with time. Will decentralized clinical trial approaches follow suit? • Source: Shutterstock

Quantification of the costs and benefits of various clinical trial flexibilities relied upon during the COVID-19 pandemic could help drive routine inclusion of some of these approaches, such as decentralized data collection and remote monitoring, into clinical trial protocols from the start.

Building such flexibilities into clinical trials at the outset could help make studies more resilient in the face of sudden...