2023: A milestone year for clinical trials?

An interview reflecting on 2022 and looking forward to the year ahead with Paul O'Donohoe senior director, eCOA Product and Science at Medidata.

What particular challenges did the industry face in 2022?

The biggest challenge was taking stock of what has unfolded over the past few years. In 2022, we emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic: things were opening back up and clinical trials were basically back to “normal,” running as they had before the pandemic and not having to respond to the sudden shut down of sites. We’d obviously responded to these challenges over the pandemic and the lockdowns by rolling out a lot of decentralized or virtual solutions, and I think in 2022 we were catching our breath and working out what worked and what didn’t work so well. As an industry, we rolled things out very quickly, which is not something the pharmaceutical industry likes to do, so it was a case of working out what we’d learned from that experience and what we want to take into 2023 and beyond.