Clinical Trials to go Green: A Sustainable Argument for Decentralized Digital Clinical Trials!
I. Decentralized Digital Clinical Trials
DDCTs are faster and more cost-effective, more accessible for patients with the possibility to participate independently from where they live or their socio-economic background and reduce documentation effort
II. Digitising Clinical Trials and the Environment
Digitising clinical trials not only improves the clinical trial system, but is also less harmful for the environment: Informed consent forms, data protection information, test forms, questionnaires, registration forms, and visits to the study centres consume a lot of paper and energy in traditional clinical trials
lII. A Traditional Clinical Trial produces 4,885 kg of CO2
1. A typical clinical trial with 2000 patients visiting one of the ten study sites nine times would require a total of 164,800 sheets of paper for case reports and patient forms, the study master file, and site files. This corresponds to a stack of paper higher than 16m and 799 kg CO2.
2. On average, each of the ten centres will be monitored five times throughout the course of a clinical trial. If we assume the clinical monitor will be travelling to each of the centers by car, another 3,808 kg of CO2 would be emitted into the atmosphere
3. When study participants are required to travel to the study centres, an additional 237 kg of CO2 will be emitted into the atmosphere.
4. Study documents need to be sent back and forth between the monitor and the centres over the course of the study. With one letter per patient and 20 g of CO2 per letter this adds up to another 40 kg of CO2.
IV. Extrapolation
Extrapolating the estimations for the three different scenarios to the approximately 15,000 clinical trials starting every year in Europe, according to the International Clinical Trial Registry Platform of the WHO , there is the potential to save between 41,009 t and 65,981 t CO2 per year
V. Conclusion
By embracing DDCTs regulatory authorities, policymakers, funders, health care companies and researchers can play their part in achieving these legally mandated climate targets. It is about time to for all interested parties to sit down at the same table to securely enable this aim
Check out the article by Simon Kohl and Prof. Dr. Caroline Schmidt-Lucke at MEDIACC GmbH here: https://lnkd.in/drgFFU9k
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