Increasing Diversity in Clinical Trials
The evidence and insights from clinical trials form the backbone of care delivery, as regulatory bodies use them to approve drugs and physicians use them to decide clinical interventions and make prescription decisions. In an ideal world, clinical trials would have adequate representation from all sections of the population, regardless of ethnicity, gender, geographical location, and socioeconomic status, to ensure robust evidence for all population groups. But, in reality, clinical trial populations are significantly less diverse than the actual population the medicines are intended to treat. Though the life sciences industry acknowledges this lack of diversity in clinical trials, there has not been significant progress to address this important issue, beyond pockets of excellence in limited clinical studies.
This viewpoint examines the barriers to increase diversity in clinical trials, initiatives needed to plug the diversity gaps, technology interventions required in the clinical development value chain to improve the scenario, the role of virtualized trials in addressing various diversity barriers, and the implications and next steps for various stakeholders to achieve diversity in clinical trials.
Scope
Industry: life sciences
Geography: global
Contents
In this viewpoint, we discuss the following topics:
- The current state of diversity in clinical trials
- Challenges with diversity initiatives today
- A technology framework to increase diversity in clinical trials
- Preparing a blueprint for success
- Focusing on the journey