What Are The Advantages Of Virtual Trials?

By Deepshikha Singh, MPH, MPharm

As technology continues to become better and more integrated into the clinical development industry we are seeing increasing interest in trials that don’t require sites. Instead, many sponsors are beginning to plan trials where all patient data is gathered electronically directly by the patient. So what if participating in a clinical trial didn’t require traveling to a site? What if reporting general health condition, adverse events, and trial outcome data could be done through devices (maybe a phone, watch, or laptop). It’s not the future – it’s happening right now.

The drive towards virtual trials is being led by two converging forces. On one side, the cost of taking a new treatment has been ballooning. We won’t be going into all of the reasons for this growth here, but it’s sufficient to say that as we trend towards more complex protocols and treatments, we also trend towards higher costs. On the other, the pharmaceutical industry is making a much-needed shift towards greater patient-centricity. Instead of developing and evaluating new treatments in a vacuum, life science companies are beginning to focus on the importance of the patients in the design and evaluation of these treatments.

These two forces are combining to push the boundaries of what a clinical trial is and can be. One of the new solutions is the virtual trial, and it carries with it many advantages over a traditional trial with sites. Read more about the advantages of virtual clinical trials.