While I know that clinical trials such as the trials for vaccines cost hundreds of millions of dollar, I have a hard time understanding why they are so expensive. I read about clinical trials for a vaccine costing 10,000/study participant. Given that the trials are so expensive they seem to be the bottleneck for medical progress. If we find a way to run them cheaper that would massively accelerate medical progress.
What resources do a good job at documenting the costs of clinical trials and how those high costs come about?
My (limited) understanding is that the high costs are, in many cases, largely a matter of overhead and regulatory compliance, not technical or technological.
If that's the case, understanding the costs could allow reform of the regulations to reduce the costs and make clinical trials cheaper.
Do you know how much it costs to keep the lights on at a medical research lab? If you think about that then $10K per head is probably cheap.