May was declared Clinical Trials Awareness Month in Columbus by a proclamation signed by Mayor Teresa Tomlinson.  IACT Health CEO, Dr. Jeff Kingsley, CIO, Dr. Christine Senn, and Director of Sales and Marketing, Felicia Irvin were on hand at Tuesday’s City Council meeting to receive the official proclamation. 

Dr. Jeff Kingsley, CEO of IACT Health told the Council, “Innovation cannot happen in healthcare without the process of clinical trials.  If someone developed a cure for cancer today it would not reach patients for 20 years due to the time and costs involved in clinical trials.  The only way to overcome these barriers is through patient enrollment. There are 30 thousand trials going on worldwide now and we need 58 million patients today just in the United States to meet enrollment requirements.  It takes an average of $2.8 billion to get a new drug to market.  If we can get more collaboration among medical providers and make patients aware of the clinical trials available, we can cut the time and the cost of getting new medications on the market.