What You Missed in Boston: Is Clinical Research Really Patient-Centered?

During COVID-19, clinical research changed almost overnight. Trials moved closer to patients, long-standing assumptions about where and how studies had to operate were challenged, and approaches once considered too difficult suddenly became possible.

So why did so much of the industry go back?

That question opened a candid and wide-ranging discussion in Boston among leaders from across clinical research, drug development, and patient advocacy — and it didn’t take long for the panelists to start challenging one another.

The conversation moved well beyond decentralized trials themselves. Are we actually designing studies around patients, or simply making traditional trials slightly more convenient? Are sponsors involving patients early enough to influence protocols or asking for their input after the important decisions have already been made? And is patient access really a recruitment challenge, or a much bigger clinical development problem?

One panelist’s point drew particularly strong agreement: if patients aren’t helping to inform the protocol, can a trial really be called patient-centered?

From there, the discussion only got more animated.

Panelists debated what the industry really learned from the pandemic, why protocol complexity continues to increase despite everything we know about patient burden, whether every activity assigned to a traditional research site actually needs to happen there, and whether regulation is still the barrier many assume it is.

There were disagreements, plenty of panelists jumping in to build on one another’s answers, and one recurring challenge to the industry: stop talking about patient centricity as an aspiration and start making it part of how trials are designed from the outset.

And we’re only scratching the surface.

We’ll be sharing a full summary of the discussion in the coming weeks, including the panelists’ perspectives on protocol design, patient access, decentralized trial models, regulation, and what needs to change if patient-centered research is going to become standard rather than exceptional.

If you missed us in Boston, stay tuned. You’ll want to catch up on this one.