Developing a new drug comes with a massive price tag, often hitting billions of dollars. However, these costs aren’t set in stone; instead, they’re driven up by avoidable inefficiencies and outdated processes. Every delay adds to the expense, pushing life-saving treatments further out of reach for those who need them most.
Time isn’t abstract in this equation. It dictates every decision, inflates budgets, and delays solutions for countless patients who simply cannot wait. And yet, instead of addressing the root issue, our industry continues to tinker at the edges. Revolving outsourcing models, new software tools, and incremental adjustments dominate the narrative without meaningful progress. Safety and efficacy should remain uncompromised, but we must confront the burdens of misaligned priorities and inefficiencies head-on.
The solution? Clear the way for faster, more efficient drug development. Not by cutting corners, but by cutting waste. This goal is simple but critical: fewer delays, smarter processes, and safer outcomes. If we reassess where time is spent—and wasted—we can deliver treatments faster, reduce costs, and improve outcomes for patients and everyone involved in the drug development ecosystem. Here is the challenge before us: No shortcuts. Just better solutions.
At the center of clinical research are people—patients, trial sites, and the many stakeholders who make breakthroughs possible. However, these key players are drowning under misplaced burdens. While protocols and systems grow more demanding, the financial and emotional toll placed on participants and sites has pushed the system into an unsustainable cycle.
Clinical trial sites are the backbone of research yet carry a disproportionate share of its weight. As SCRS detailed in their 2023 Site Landscape Survey, 26% of sites have just six months’ financial runway and 10% have less than one. These sites often face delayed reimbursements, excessive financial strain, and a flood of administrative tasks that chip away at their ability to deliver quality research. Some are left relying on their funds to keep trials moving forward.
Many sites are on the brink; beyond being unfair, this is completely counterproductive. Without financially stable sites, trials stall. Without trials, innovation stops. Resolving this means fairer, more timely reimbursements and simplified financial processes that allow sites to focus on what matters most: conducting trials efficiently and ethically.
Patients aren’t just numbers in a data set. They’re people with busy lives, financial constraints, and valid apprehensions about the demands of trials. All too often, the current landscape expects them to participate out of sheer altruism or for the sake of advancing medicine alone, often with little acknowledgment of their sacrifices. Time away from work and family, travel, discomfort from procedures—all these burdens are made worse by minimal compensation or support.
If we continue down this path, participation will falter. To improve enrollment rates, we must start by respecting the realities patients face. Fair incentivization is essential, but true respect goes deeper. Offering practical support, creating flexibility, and simplifying trial expectations are crucial steps to meet patients' socioeconomic and emotional needs, reducing participation barriers.
Protocols are growing more specific and intricate. These layers, meant to enhance rigor, often end up causing confusion and slowing progress instead. For patients, this complexity creates confusion and a sense of disconnection. For sites, it increases workloads and delays progress.
We need to ask one hard question at every step of trial design: Does this truly help us achieve our goals? If the answer isn’t clear, it’s time to simplify. Trials must reflect reality by accommodating diverse participants, eliminating unnecessary procedures, and maintaining a focus on what patients can realistically commit to. Scientific standards must remain robust, but a shift to practicality can mean the difference between stalled progress and life-saving cures.
Cutting waste isn’t about shrinking budgets. Rather, it’s about reallocating resources to their most effective use. Much of what stalls trials today has nothing to do with science or safety. It lies in redundant processes, outdated systems, and misplaced priorities. By targeting inefficiencies directly, we can accelerate progress without inflating costs.
We can tackle the biggest inefficiencies head-on, starting with steps that make financial processes less of a hassle for everyone involved.
Trial sites should not need to fight for reimbursement. Standardized payment processes can ease financial strain while improving efficiency for all parties involved. Clear timelines, straightforward payment systems, and honest agreements are practical ways to ensure sites get paid promptly and fairly, cutting out unnecessary admin work and reinforcing trust across all parties involved.
Tasks like triple-checking automation may seem risk-averse but often produce diminishing returns. Trusting validated systems means shorter processes without sacrificing quality. Tighten up initial checks, cut back on redundant reviews, and focus your time where it can make a real difference.
Like water seeping into cracks and crevices, bureaucracy without boundaries fills every available space. A clear analysis of which administrative tasks directly contribute to outcomes—and which don’t—redirects resources to where they are needed most.
Optimizing spending is more than a theoretical advantage. It allows us to focus resources on supporting sites, patients, and science, enabling trials to move at the speed of innovation rather than the molasses pace of bureaucracy.
Trust isn’t optional. It’s the foundation for every successful partnership in clinical research. Yet too often, stakeholders operate in silos, misunderstanding one another’s needs, limitations, and potential. The result? Strained relationships, inefficiencies, and delays.
Every decision made by Sponsors, service providers, and sites ripples across the ecosystem, affecting patients most of all. We must start making decisions with transparency and consideration, asking how each action impacts the realities of those closest to the ground. Open communication ensures alignment, reduces friction, and fosters the collaboration this field so desperately needs.
At its core, trust relies on clarity. Stakeholders must know what to expect and how their contributions fit into the larger purpose.
Clinical research is science, but it’s also a human process. Over-engineered bureaucracy betrays its aims when it chokes progress and obscures its reason for being. What we need isn’t perfection for perfection’s sake. We need rigor balanced with common sense.
This is no pet project. Streamlined, patient-centered trials represent the lifeline of scientific advancement. By addressing system-wide inefficiencies and misplaced burdens—and by committing to both profitability and life-saving cures—we can build a future that serves patients, providers, Sponsors, and stakeholders equally.
The time for half measures is over. The industry needs bold change. Beyond helping to solve today’s problems, Sponsors and providers willing to tackle these challenges head-on will set the stage for what’s next in drug development. Profit and cures can coexist, and with the courage to lead, they will.
Moisha Platto joined Scout as a Strategic Advisor in 2021, advancing to Chief Operating Officer in 2023. He was appointed Chief Executive Officer in 2024. Click here to connect with Moisha on LinkedIn.