What Is The Role Of Money In Clinical Trial Services?

By Author: William Johanna
Total Articles: 9
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Clinical trial recruitment is that stage in a clinical trial when patients are enlisted to take part in the trial. This is the stage in a clinical trials process that gets many drug companies and researchers worried. The success of a clinical trial depends on how well recruitment is done. Sometimes clinical trials are delayed for months or even years because the company couldn't recruit enough participants or the participants kept on dropping out of the trial.

Dedicated medical trial services providers are really helping researchers with patient recruitment but the challenges of enlisting and retaining participants continue to dog these trials. To try and beat the challenges involved in trial recruitment, money has been used to entice people to take part in trials. Opinions on the use of money to attract and retain patients in clinical trials are sharply divided. One school of thought maintains that giving people money to participate in clinical trials is unethical. The opposite side sees nothing wrong with it.

Money plays a key role in clinical trial recruitment. Drug companies fork out huge sums of money to ...
... clinical trial services providers to make the burden of recruiting patients lighter. Such monies are usually put to good use by most patient recruitment consultants. For instance, patients need to be paid some money to cater for such things as transport costs from their homes to the clinic where they are expected to report regularly. Without such facilitation few people would volunteer to help drug companies with their trials. Medical trial services providers also compensate patients for their time and willingness to participate in the trial, acknowledging that their time is valuable.

Controversy nonetheless arises when reluctant patients are given money as an enticement for them to sign up for a trial or when their family members are paid to talk them into signing up. Critics equate this to bribery. It is indeed immoral to pay family members, particularly if they are financially deprived, in order for them to convince one of their own to join a clinical trial. People opposed to this practice aver that if drug companies are not closely watched they could use their immense resources to 'buy' patients' approval hence denying them the right to make informed choices. Fearing controversy, some drug companies lavish patients and their families with goodies instead of money. This basically amounts to the same unethical practice but a distinction must be drawn between outright bribery and meaningful incentives.

Clinical trial services often give patients incentives to encourage them to join and stay the course. There is nothing inherently wrong with this unless certain lines are crossed. For instance, a patient and his family can be given free medical screenings maybe once a year at the clinic where the trial is taking place as an incentive – which is perfectly acceptable. The patient reserves the right to exit the trial at any point. It is unethical, and researchers agree on this, to offer large incentives to stop the patient from quitting the trial. If someone opts out, he or she should be allowed to go.

The question of money clinical trial recruitment matters will continue to be a tricky one in. Needless to say, everyone agrees that these services are not free but the elephant in the room is, how much money should a drug company spend and on what should the money be spent?

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