In March 2025, the government announced its ambition to reduce the time it takes to set up a clinical trial to 150 days, sparking a wave of activity across in health and care research teams across the country that has achieved notable progress in meeting this ambitious target.
The target was aimed initially at commercial clinical trials and while this has since been extended to all studies, including non-commercial studies, anecdotal evidence suggests that it may be having a detrimental impact on non-commercial studies.
The UK Clinical Research Delivery Programme (UKCRD) therefore asked the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC) and UK Research and Development (UKRD) to undertake an analysis of the impact, which has now been published. This paper summarises evidence collated from AMRC member charities, UKRD, the UK
Collaborative on Cancer Clinical Research (UK3CR) and a number of Clinical Trial Units.
While the improvements in study set-up for commercial interventional trials are also being seen across a range of studies, there has been some negative impact on non-commercial trials and it is vital that the benefits delivered by all trials are recognised and valued equally.