Three Barriers Preventing Clinical Trial Innovation

By Jenna Rouse, Chief Experience Officer at Pro-ficiency

The move to more decentralized trials in response to restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic illustrated that the clinical trial industry is well able to take new technology on board and adapt it to use in the conduct of studies. But outside that example, the industry has been and largely remains resistant to any types of change, including the adopting of new technologies, even when such technologies offer clear time or cost benefits.

Although adoption of new technology and innovation has seen a rapid rise in the world at large over the last decade, organizations that lag in adopting new technology and new ways of doing things are more common than not in the clinical research industry. A recent survey by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development (CSDD)[1]  indicated that innovations in the clinical trial arena take nearly six years to adopt. Planning and initiation of an innovation can take almost 14 months, with evaluation of viability and impact takes nearly 16 months. Another 16 months may be spent deciding whether to move forward with an innovation; it can then take 23 months to implement it.

“The timeframe to go through each stage of the process varies by company size, but overall, respondents report the later stages of the process—deciding to adopt the change and implementing it—are the most difficult,” the report said.

The CSDD survey results, published in the center’s July/August 2022 Impact Report, indicated that while 67.8% of respondents rated their companies’ abilities to adopt innovations as “excellent” or “good,” 60% also report that their companies are slower to adopt those innovations compared to similar organizations.