Risk-Based Monitoring in Clinical Trials: 2021 Update

Clinical trial quality depends on ensuring participant safety and data integrity, which require careful management throughout the trial lifecycle, from protocol development to final data analysis and submission. Recent developments—including new regulatory requirements, emerging technologies, and trial decentralization—have increased adoption of risk-based monitoring (RBM) and its parent framework, risk-based quality management (RBQM) in clinical trials. The Association of Clinical Research Organizations (ACRO), recognizing the growing importance of these approaches, initiated an ongoing RBM/RBQM landscape survey project in 2019 to track adoption of the eight functional components of RBQM. Here we present results from the third annual survey, which included data from 4889 clinical trials ongoing in 2021. At least one RBQM component was implemented in 88% of trials in the 2021 survey, compared with 77% in 2020 and 53% in 2019. The most frequently implemented components in 2021 were initial and ongoing risk assessments (80 and 78% of trials, respectively). Only 7% of RBQM trials were Phase IV, while the proportions of Phase I–III trials ranged 27–36%. Small trials (< 300 participants) accounted for 60% of those implementing RBQM. The therapeutic areas with the largest number of RBQM trials were oncology (38%), neurology (10%), and infectious diseases (9%). The 2021 survey confirmed a pattern of increasing RBM/RBQM adoption seen in earlier surveys, with risk assessments, which have broad regulatory support, driving RBQM growth; however, one area requiring further development is implementation of centralized monitoring combined with reductions in source data verification (SDV) and source data review (SDR).