Working Towards Greater Access and Diversity in Trials

ACT: What are some trends that you're currently seeing with patient reimbursement?

Murphy: There are a huge number of trends that are happening now. I think the first one is just that there's a recognition that patient burden is going up because protocols are getting more complicated, meaning narrower inclusion criteria, longer and more frequent visits and whatnot. As burden goes up, it's harder for people to commit to going into trials, and it's harder for them to stay in those trials once they join and with that understanding and combining that with the notion of trying to create greater access and diversity in clinical trials worldwide be really good science and good social policy as well. There's a movement to change and make sure that the demographics of clinical research are not middle-class males, which is basically what a disproportionate number or proportion of the population in most studies has been till now, so that notion of patient-neutral spend, making sure that a participant that does want to participate in a trial is not going to incur costs. That is a really big movement, and that's the biggest trend. Behind that is a little bit of a drill-down into recognition that if you're a childbearing age adult, your needs, predispositions, and support requirements are going to be very different from somebody who is retired, octogenarian, so knowing that, there's not going to be as much of a childcare or a pet care, or maybe there's instead a companion support element. Those are all really important things to understand about your therapeutic area and your target demographic. Also, certain concentrations of people, they vary across geographies, not just big city, small city, but in different countries where it's just laid out differently in the health system. There's a lot of recognition of variance, which is a huge thing.