Vaccines, treatments, cures, and other health technologies must undergo clinical trials. Clinical trials are critical for health innovation and have enabled the creation of antibiotics, cancer treatments, and even the COVID-19 vaccine.
Clinical trials are health research studies conducted on people in a controlled, medical setting to provide knowledge of the efficacy, dosage, response and side effects of a new product. There are many different types of clinical trials, such as:
- Treatment trials: Test the effectiveness of new drugs or treatments¹
- Prevention trials: Examine ways to prevent people from developing a disease¹
- Screening trials: Determine the best way to test for certain conditions or diseases¹
We’ve seen history being made with the rapid vaccine turnaround for the COVID-19 vaccines this past year, because people were willing and eager to participate in this research. In July 2020, Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines went through phase 3 clinical trials with 43,448 participants from 5 different countries² and only 6 months later, published their results in December 2020, even though it would normally take 1–4 years³ to conduct a similar trial! We owe a big thanks to science, particularly to the researchers who worked around…
