Complexity Continues to Challenge Clinical Costs

In March 2022, the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development (CSDD) issued an impact report that examines clinical trial budgets and factors that drive commonly observed variations and cost. “Part of the focus of all of these studies is to understand how complexity, how increased customization in our trials, more fragmentation as we have different parties involved, contributes to longer cycle times and larger budgets than comparable studies when we control by therapeutic area,” explains Tufts CSDD Executive Director and Professor Ken Getz, who also serves as board chair for the Center for Information and Study on Clinical Research Participation. “Not only are we seeing longer timelines today, and larger budgets, but we see more variation around the mean for any of these measures, which means that it's getting more difficult for companies to predict or to anticipate and manage an expected timeline or an expected budget.”