The advantages of decentralised clinical trials (DCTs) are generally recognised, especially the opportunity to make clinical trials more patient centric. Additional benefits are increasingly in evidence, such as improved patient recruitment, retention, and enhanced data quality. 

Nonetheless, there is a way to go before decentralised clinical trials are the standard rather than the optional model. Not surprisingly, technology and operational challenges appear to still be a stumbling block as sponsors get to grips with introducing new ways of working with sites and patients along with timeline demand in trials. The regulators’ familiarity and comfort with the new approaches is growing, but is their guidance enough to give sponsors the confidence to drive forward these models? What will it take for sponsors to overcome the challenges and embed decentralisation into their everyday operations and reap the promised benefits? 

This Financial Times Digital Dialogue, in partnership with ICON, brought together leaders in the pharma clinical development arena to discuss their most recent experiences of DCTs, where they see the greatest issues and shared some of the strategies and tactics they are exploring to deliver success in decentralised clinical trials. Speakers also discussed how they are assessing the economic value and benefits, and the new metrics for quantifying financial returns and building the business case for making DCT the standard going forward. 

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