Why do so many clinical trials fail?

BERLIN - Nov. 28, 2014 - PRLog -- According to an article published by Nature Biotechnology the success rate of clinical trials are alarmingly low. The likelihood of approval significantly drops through each stage, with success rate from Phase I to Phase to II roughly 65%, while only 32% appear to advance from Phase II to Phase III.
With the costs for conducting clinical trials rapidly increasing, along with the added complication of revenue decline due to patent loss, generic drugs and new regulations, increasing the efficiency and success rate of clinical trials is a business necessity.
To do so, clinical researchers need to look at the reasons why clinical trials fail, and what they need to do to fix the problem. For example, senior professionals will be discussing the difficulties of conducting trials in rare diseases such as haemophilia at the Patient Recruitment and Retention (http://patientrecruitmentsummit.com/) Summit in Berlin. When it comes to rare diseases the challenges faced are the limited number of patients, competing priorities and strained resources.
With limited number of patients at sites, one solution has been adopted in multicenter trials. However, this presents its own set of complications in recruitment strategy and ethnic/geographical differences.
The complications in creating a successful clinical trial are further compounded when we take into consideration the patient. How to engage with the patient, to motivate them to stay in the trial? To take the medication as prescribed etc etc. There are a variety of different strategies being applied to tackle this issue such as ‘patient empowerment’, ‘becoming a patient centric company’, or using new technologies to track patients' use of the drugs. Giving the patients a voice, making them more aware, providing more knowledge and removing barriers to participation are all excellent ideas to increase the success of a trial.
With so many variables and factors out there that can affect the outcome of a trial it makes summits such as the Patient Recruitment and Retention Summit in Berlin all the more important. The chance to discuss all of these issues with leading professionals in the field does not come often enough – especially when you consider that this is the only patient recruitment summit in Europe in 2015.

Additional Source:

http://www.clinicalinformaticsnews.com/cln/2014/1/13/can-clinical-trial-changes-increase-drug-approvals.html