*The translation of this article in French, Spanish, and German has been made through machine translation and has not been edited yet. we apologise for any inaccuracies.
Do Healthcare Professionals Trust Virtual Clinical Trials?
Due to COVID-19 restrictions, clinical researchers have been forced to find remote solutions when conducting paid clinical trials phases. But how does it work, and are results from virtual clinical trials trusted by the healthcare community?
In May 2022, we asked over 3 700 global healthcare professionals from M3 Global Research panel if they would trust data from paid clinical trials conducted virtually. Before diving into last month’s M3 Pulse results, let´s clarify what a paid clinical trial is and what the challenges and opportunities of a virtual clinical trial might be.
What Is a Clinical Trial?
Clinical research is the study of how to prevent, diagnose, and treat illness in people. A clinical trial is a type of clinical research study that is designed to test new interventions such as treatments, medications, and devices to evaluate their effects on human health outcomes. These trials can also be used to answer specific questions about new ways of using existing treatments. The process of clinical trials involves long and complex protocols, and they are often conducted in four clinical trial phases which are carefully designed and reviewed. Before they can start, they need to be approved by national health and human service agencies. People of all ages can volunteer to participate in clinical trials but there are many guidelines on how to select/ recruit participants and who qualifies to participate to limit bias research results and to ensure that ethics and safety regulations are followed.
If you are interested to know more about the four phases of clinical trials and the different types of clinical research, you can read more on the U.S Food and Drug Administrations (FDA) website.
Virtual Clinical Trials: Challenges and Opportunities
Virtual clinical trials are clinical trials that are conducted remotely with help of technology (apps, monitoring devices, etc.) and the inclusion of web platforms to allow the participant to be home-based at every stage of the clinical trial. As remote approaches are fairly new, clinical researchers are still developing protocols in order to improve and optimize remote clinical trials. Both pros and cons are currently being discussed by the public and the medical science community.
Some challenges when conducting clinical trials virtually:
- Recruitment and sample quality
- Adverse reactions and reporting
- Compliance monitoring and data accuracy
- Trial credibility
- Privacy concerns
Main opportunities of virtual clinical trials:
- Higher recruitment rates
- Higher engagement and lower drop-out rates
- Can be conducted faster and be more timely by the clinical researchers
- Cost-efficient and requires less workforce
- Data capture proficiency and the ability to capture data in real-time gives opportunity for more accurate data and findings
What do you think, should we start switching to virtual clinical trials? Please share your opinions in the comment section below!
M3 Pulse Results From May 2022: Are Virtual Clinical Trials Trusted?
As a healthcare professional, would you trust data from paid clinical trials conducted virtually?
The results show that majority of healthcare professionals, 52% of the respondents, trust in data from virtual clinical trials. 24% of those, think that clinical trials conducted remotely can be efficient and safe, whereas 28% do trust them, but only in some cases. 32% of the respondent’s report that they would trust the outcome more if the clinical trial was conducted in a hybrid format (online and in-person). Only 12% stated that they would not trust virtually conducted clinical trials.
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As a healthcare professional, you may want to see results from our previous M3 Pulse surveys to know what your colleagues around the world think about other trending healthcare topics. Check out the insights from our latest M3 Pulse surveys in our M3 Blog about How healthcare apps impact patient treatments and Politicisation of healthcare during the pandemic.
1 comments
I think it works, I was a pet of a clinical trial for Lupus and it was very helpful for people who was diagnosed later.