3 Reasons Why Decentralized Trial Models Using Mobile Research Nurses Yield Greater Financial Returns

Decentralized trials (DCTs) have grown in acceptance since the COVID pandemic when mobile research nurses were asked to step in and save hundreds of site-based clinical trials that were in jeopardy of being postponed or cancelled because of mandated lockdowns and fear of spreading the virus. Despite their proven ability to persevere against one of Biopharma’s greatest challenges, DCTs are still often an afterthought or an add-on option to site-based trials due to cost concerns.

The perception has been that deploying mobile research nurses to visit patients at their own homes would be more expensive than site-based trials. Even in some directly comparable examples, this may not be true e.g., if chemotherapy patients need to have their blood drawn a specific number of hours following a treatment. Such blood draws done at a traditional site may require extended office hours, phlebotomists and lab access—none of which would be required with a home visit.  However, this simplified view of the cost of a home visit instead of a patient visiting a site does not consider the most expensive, albeit indirect, total cost/value of clinical trials. A more holistic (and better) comparison is to consider the total cost of a pipeline of clinical trials vs a portfolio of those which incorporate DCT elements.