Report stating Oz clinical trials are costly is flawed, experts say

Experts say report is flawed as Australia is home to good tax incentives for research and development

A report suggesting Australia is a costly location for carrying out clinical trials is flawed and the context of the data merits further interpretation, according to experts from the country's research and development (R&D) industry.

In a statement issued in time for International Clinical Trials Day yesterday (May 20th), Luke Edington, part of clinical project management at Datapharm Australia, called for the report to incorporate wider factors.

These include R&D tax incentives, the Australian regulatory environment, patient population, investigator fees and laboratory costs and recruitment rates, among other criteria.

Mr Edington said: "Broad economic indicators are not sufficient to draw solid conclusions on clinical trial management costs and it is unfair to rank a country's R&D costs on these factors alone."

It was argued that the exclusion of the R&D tax incentive from the report, currently up to about 45 per cent, prevented Australia from being placed competitively with Russia.

Therefore, it was stressed that those looking at the KPMG report should examine the data in detail before drawing up their own conclusions.