Major Players in Clinical Research :- Common sense is the basis for a lot of things we do in our daily lives and apart from common sense we do learn through our personal experiences or observations. But many a times common sense is not the finest approach and sometimes there are contradictory theories about what is best or what works in a specific situation.
Medical professionals cannot afford to take risks and research generated evidence is needed. For Clinical Research, this is even a legitimate requirement in that pharmaceutical companies cannot gain marketing approvals until they have proved to the applicable authorities that the new drug is effective and safe. They accomplish this by conducting a series of clinical trials.
The clinical research industry is an ever-growing and ever-evolving sector. It is constantly embracing innovations that would not be probable without the many significant players and stakeholders within this sector. These stakeholders includes the human volunteers/subjects, clinical research team comprising of Investigators and clinical research coordinators, regulatory authorities, government agencies, sponsors, monitors, Contract Research Organizations (CROs), Clinical trial Site Management Organizations (SMOs), ethics committees or Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), academic institutions and innumerable other public and private organizations whose involvement will greatly influence the clinical research endeavors. In fact, with the additional diversity of stakeholders comes further complexity in joint efforts and interactions.
Each stakeholder/player offers a different set of tools to support the essential components of a clinical trial and all these players are unavoidable part of clinical research frame work without exception.