The efforts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine focused the world’s attention on the pharmaceutical industry. Before the pandemic hit, very few people outside of the healthcare industry understood what it takes to develop a new drug. Nor did they consider the complexities of administering the various medications that require a regimen that goes beyond “take one pill each morning.”
The biopharmaceutical industry is massive, accounting for more than $1.3 trillion in economic output, representing four percent of total U.S. output in 2015 alone. This total economic impact includes $558 billion in revenue from biopharmaceutical businesses and $659 billion from suppliers and worker spending.
Despite remarkable innovation and progress over the past several decades, the prevailing public opinions are usually focused on high drug costs and the role that plays in the rise in healthcare costs. Finding a cure for the COVID-19 virus presented an opportunity for the industry to shine. Nobody cared about traditional timelines in development and testing; the need to get the cure was vital. The time for warp speed had arrived.
Clinical Trials are Front Page News
Mainstream news and political briefings have included regular discussions about phase three clinical trials since the early summer of 2020 when several COVID-19 vaccines began to show promise.
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Creating a new drug normally takes years, if not decades. The combination of research, chemistry, manufacturing, and multiple waves of testing to prove efficacy and safety was the process. There are also different rules and protocols in every country that must be considered when bringing a new drug to market. Often, the multiple clinical trial phases presented the biggest hurdle in getting a new drug to market.
The trial phase of developing a new drug is a challenge, especially when you consider the volume of trials that are launched each year. The number of registered clinical trials has skyrocketed 150x since 2000, and the average number of outcomes measured per trial has increased 86% over the last 20 years. This explosion has put enormous pressure on the scarcest resource: patients.
There is an opportunity to leverage technology to engage and recruit patients for clinical trials, but it’s often easier said than done. Despite the existence of countless software systems and mobile applications, 86% of clinical trials are delayed 1-6 months because they can’t meet their recruitment targets on time. Additionally, 15-20% of trials never even enroll a single patient and are forced to close.
In the race to find a cure for COVID-19, delays, and failures were not an option. It presented an opportunity to rethink how to engage large patient populations for the trials through technology, with scheduling being front and center.
Source: Hitconsultant
