The Silver Lining of COVID-19 for Clinical Trials
Clinical Trials are a critical component to ensure both safety and efficacy in the development of every new pharmaceutical agent, medical device, or specific protocol. Traditionally, this requires a sponsor to design the trial, for patients to be identified and recruited, and for individual study sites to be located. The study sites are physical locations to which patients must report at appointed times for completing the study protocol. Funding fuels the whole system by covering the costs of supplies, investigator or clinical research organization (CRO) activities, and patient reimbursement. Increasingly, global trends towards digitization have shifted this paradigm of how clinical trials are delivered, elevating the use of decentralized trial technology tools and patient convenience solutions.