Introducing the Clinical Trials Efficiency Project

To make clinical trials faster and less costly, we need system-level reform

I’m excited to share that I am launching a new research project on systemic reforms to reduce the cost of clinical trials, funded by a grant from Coefficient Giving (formerly Open Philanthropy).

Over the past few months, I’ve been writing about how clinical trials became so expensive and inefficient, and why it’s so critical to reduce their costs. High clinical trial costs limit what we can study and limit the availability of new treatments for patients.

I believe that fixing this problem will require more than just new approaches and pilots; we need systemic reform: changes to the policy, infrastructure, incentives, and business models that underlie the industry. We also need to take collective action: We need to work together across the clinical trials and health policy community to make these reforms a reality.

Over the coming months, I’ll be working on doing just that. If you work in trials and have views on where the bottlenecks are to progress - or how we can fix them - please reach out to me - I would love to hear from you.

As we progress, I’ll be sharing what I learn on this Substack, so if you want to stay up to date on this effort, continue to follow me here.

Adam