Clinical trials don’t fail fast enough

Clinical trials don’t fail fast enough

IBM
Published by: Research Desk Released: Jun 14, 2020

The roughly $2.6 billion1 spent on developing one new drug reflects the fully capitalized costs of studying compounds that ultimately fail to reach the market. For each drug that becomes available, about $1.4 billion2 represents direct out-of-pocket costs. That means about $1.2 billion was spent on time and resources that led to clinical trial failures. The sooner companies can determine if a development phase should be called off, the sooner they can save money and dedicate those savings to more promising projects. Sophisticated analytics combined with deep insights into current scientific literature and other proprietary data may allow companies to, for example, halt a Phase Two trial after an ambiguous Phase One result. If the drug failed in Phase Two, that faiDatalure alone would lead to a cost of $17 million9.