The Importance of Diversity in Clinical Trials
The importance of diversity in clinical trials cannot be understated. Clinical trials involve many different types of people and many of those people come from very different backgrounds. Treatments for serious diseases like diabetes, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis will always be highly motivated by pharmaceutical companies, because it is a disease whose cure could profoundly affect the company’s business model and therefore their shareholder’s equity. All of these drugs’ development teams will always have to ensure that all of the patients they carry out the trials on are given the best possible chance to benefit from their treatments.
Many trials do have strict guidelines about the kind of care available to patients who are home-care patients and there have even been cases where trial investigators have gone out of their way to avoid treating these patients with standard treatments so that they can carry out more expensive targeted treatments on them. There is a real need for trial investigators to ensure that all patients who are involved in the trial get the best treatment according to their needs, interests and the level of their complexity. For Paid Clinical Trials information, go to Trials 4 Us
In conclusion, the importance of diversity in clinical trials cannot be overlooked. The trial investigators work with very different groups of patients. There are some trials that involve only healthy volunteers, whereas others may involve the carers of patients with long-standing disease or disabilities. This requires that the trial investigators think very carefully about the kind of care each patient needs. That care should take into account the particular demands which the patients make of the healthcare system and there has to be an attempt to strike the right balance between a patient’s ability to give informed consent and the requirements of the trial for each patient.