08 Sep Trial participants are heroes, let’s treat them that way

By Steve Rosenberg, Applied Clinical Trials

Clinical trial participation is the most important factor to enable pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device companies to move their medicines and treatments forward to improve the health of all of us. We all know someone that is on a medicine that was not available 30 or even 15 years ago that have had amazing benefits for those patients. Everything from a statin for cholesterol to cancer treatments like Keytruda, Opdivo, and Tagrisso.

We all know how difficult it is to recruit people into a clinical trial, and we all read that on average the dropout rate of a study is around 30%. Why is that? And what can be done about it?

I believe that there is a macro problem that needs to be solved. And that is that we as a global society do not treat clinical trial participants like the heroes they truly are. Make no mistake about it, being a clinical trial participant, especially in an interventional trial, is a sacrifice of time and body and represents a true commitment on the part of the patient. Read more …