Les Rose appreciates the complexity of calculating costs in clinical trials. Principal of PharmaVision Consulting, a small consulting firm, he has been helping to run trials for a few decades, both independently and at his own small contract research organization (CRO). Rose says sponsors have learned to be tolerant of delay, indulgent of budget overruns. "Lateness is…more...

Mike Lange, a senior manager at ClearTrial, is not a board-certified oncologist. But he is breezing through a demonstration of the Chicago company’s software. There is a faux oncology trial on Lange’s screen, and he sets himself the task of finishing a few months early. The software produces rapid, highly detailed clinical trial budgets and time lines.…more...

Karen Hultberg was frustrated. The administrator of the New York Hospital Queens' Lang Research Center was trying to do more studies. But there was a big obstacle: for each research subject's check, she had make a separate request to the hospital's finance department. Each check—typically for $25 or $50—took one to three months to obtain and mail.…more...

One notable aspect of media coverage of clinical trials is the ready acceptance of the cost of a particular clinical research program. In every notable publication, as far as we can tell, the cost of a trial or a research program is confidently said to be so many tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. The amount…more...