The planning phase is crucial to the success of your clinical trial. As such, it helps you set the standards for the whole research trial. Therefore, you must get it right before launching your research. During planning obstacles such as high financial costs often threaten the trial’s overall outcome. Thus, it’s essential to do comprehensive planning for your clinical trials with CROs like Veristat to ensure you mitigate these challenges. Other barriers to be overcome include;
Use of Traditional Methods
Most clinical trials are still using outdated methods for their data collection, records keeping, patient recruitment, etc. most of the information gathered is recorded on paper. It is contradicting because drug development relies heavily on technology more so in Virtual Clinical Trials. There are credible online tools that can be used for these exercises and would prove to be cost-effective. However, most clinical trials are yet to adopt these tools. The use of online tools saves time and money as keying in data does not take much time. These tools also help in risk management and monitoring, and other areas.
Site Selection and Participant Recruitment
It is a requirement that you have a specified number of patients take part in a clinical trial. Achieving these numbers can be a lengthy and challenging process. It causes delays in the trials and results in extra cost as the exercises may not work within the stated budget. The site selection process is another major obstacle as there are specific standards that a selected site must meet. These standards include infrastructure, technology, accessibility, and other factors. It cannot be easy to find a place that meets all the requirements. Therefore, there is a need for in-depth research on several sites available.
Lengthy Timelines
Studies show that the length of time taken to complete trails has increased over the years. Most of this time is allocated to the drug development procedure. However much of this may be intended to deliver quality drugs. This, however, poses a significant obstacle to the overall trial. The clinical trial team must be paid for the overdue hours, and there’s the use of other resources to sustain this timeline. What’s more, these delays lead to increased competition from other researchers who take a shorter time to develop their drugs and complete the trial. When planning, there’s a need to include all the factors needed for the trial’s success. There should be a budget and the drug development process should not lead to altered or delayed results.
Insufficiency of Clinical Workforce
Another barrier that can impact clinical trial planning is an insufficient workforce. Most trials do not have trained personnel that are familiar with such procedures. For this reason, time and resources have to be spent on training the nurses from the selected sites. This also involves familiarizing the nurses with how a clinical trial works. When planning for a trial, it’s wise to ensure the workforce from the sites has some knowledge about clinical trials to save on time and resources.
The barriers faced in clinical trials can be fully mitigated with proper planning. However, there should be a well-laid-out plan to ensure you complete the trial on time. Plus researchers should adopt online tools as they are credible and easy to use.
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