2021 forecast: The rise and rise of the virtual trial model

A virtual, decentralized or siteless clinical trial model; however you want to describe it, a new way of running studies is here, and it wants to stay.

Once seen as a gimmick, the COVID-19 global pandemic has made it into a necessity. The brick-and-mortar approach of having patients travel to set clinical sites for their trials has always been a burden, but the advent of telehealth and telemedicine, which can allow some participants to be assessed at home, was a key driver in getting R&D moving again when COVID-19 stopped everything in its tracks this spring.