Decentralized Trials Are Better Understood, But 5 Misconceptions Persist

Executive Summary

Even though decentralized clinical trials (DCTs) have existed for almost 20 years, many sponsors and CROs hesitated to employ them for a variety of reasons, including discomfort due to a lack of familiarity. But the COVID-19 pandemic changed that.

Sponsors who would never have considered a DCT in the past were suddenly flocking to DCT service providers in desperate efforts to rescue their drug trials. As a result, most sponsors and CROs are now familiar with DCTs.

Despite the progress, persistent misconceptions remain and are standing in the way of wider adoption of DCTs and the benefits they bring, including making potentially life-saving drugs more accessible to a more diverse range of trial participants.

Five reasons some CROs and sponsors still hesitate to use DCT methods include concerns about safety, complexity, capacity, control and cost. Here are the concerns and how one provider of mobile research services, PCM Trials, addresses them.