Intangible benefits of clinical trials: a survey on a hospital research community.

The ongoing pandemic is highlighting the strategic role of clinical trials as an essential step of biomedical research, with a potential life-saving impact on public health. Several studies have focused on the assessment of clinical trials' economic impact. Robust methods allow a reliable assessment of the impact of trials on population health in terms of new drugs development. This study shows the results of a survey administered to the research community of the IRCCS Ospedale Pediatrico Bambino Gesù. The goal of the survey was to assess how researchers' participation in clinical trials impacts on research capacity development, career improvement, health benefits, knowledge production. The study results suggest that clinical trials promote a significant improvement of research capacity by the development of scientific know-how, the creation of new research networks, the improvement of diagnosis and clinical decision-making skills, the openness to new therapeutic approaches, and the patient recruitment and data management capabilities. These results actually suggest that clinical trials lead to better care also because they contribute to create better physicians, and not only because they provide new drugs or devices. Economic benefits, patient recruitment and researchers' internal reputation have been highlighted as critical issues.