Commonwealth Club Of California Podcast

Clinical trials represent the primary means to test new drugs before they become approved by the FDA for sale and marketing as a standard of care. The purpose of these trials is to test the safety and efficacy of new drugs and their combinations. Clinical trials must be performed with the highest ethical standards and must include geographically, genetically and socio-economically diverse populations. Trials provide completely free care for all participants, ensuring that any patient can participate. However, the vast majority of cutting-edge trials are performed in elite academic tertiary care centers, requiring patients not living in the immediate vicinity to undergo burdensome travel and long stays away from home. The Guardian Research Network was developed to address these issues by bringing novel trials to community health systems where most patients are treated, effectively democratizing clinical trial access. A new digital approach was developed to consenting patients, and collecting and reporting clin