The paper explores why there is a need to support multinational IICS, what should be their objectives and what are the current funding mechanisms in Europe.
A new paper has been published on funding investigator-initiated clinical studies (IICSs) in Trials. The paper explores why there is a need to support multinational IICS, what their objectives should be and what the funding mechanisms in Europe currently are.
The paper seeks to identify barriers and provide answers to questions that are less likely to be answered by studies funded by the pharmaceutical and medical device industry.
The main barriers that have been identified are:
– Limitations of budget and duration of the eligibility of costs
– Lack of flexibility to move funds transnationally
– Tendering rules
– Complexity in the reporting of the eligible costs to funders
Although they represent almost half of the clinical research activity in Europe, IICTs are mostly conducted in a single country. Participants from different geographical, social and ethnic backgrounds add to the value of study results when compared to those from a single geographical location.
Strategies for funding multinational IICS should evolve to break down the barriers identified in the paper. This can be achieved by prioritising public funding towards multinational IICS objectives, implementing flexible public funding and by sustaining clinical research infrastructures and networks. Read it here: https://trialsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13063-024-08548-1#Ack1
Projects/ Entities implied
Authors: Marta del Álamo, Sabrina Lémeret, Cristina Nieto, Lara Pandya, Hans Hagen, Saul Walker & Jacques Demotes
ISCIII and ECRIN are beneficiaries of the ERA4Health Partnership, Horizon Europe Framework Programme, co-funded by the European Union. Grant Agreement No: 101095426. The workshop “Funding mechanisms for Investigator Initiated Clinical Studies”, where some of the topics described in this manuscript were described, was funded by ERA4Health.
