Well over 250 years ago, in what is widely recognized as the first clinical trial, James Lind, a Scottish surgeon in the British navy, attempted to find a treatment for scurvy. On long voyages he used control groups to determine the efficacy of citrus fruits against scurvy, a disease that had been ravaging the British navy for many years. James Lind published his findings from those fateful voyages on May 20th, 1747. Today, May 20th is celebrated internationally as Clinical Trials Day.
The concept of clinical trials did not take off at once. It took hundreds of years for clinical trials to take the form they have today. Placebos were used for the first time in 1863, over 100 years after the original voyages. It wasn't until 1964 with the declaration of Helsinki that the modern era of clinical trials truly began. With the adaptation of GCP in 1996 at the International Conference of Harmonization, clinical trials adopted the stringent practices of today.
The evolution of the clinical trial has been gradual. But the last two decades have been marked by the ever-increasing speed and number of trials.
In 2003, when Viedoc Technologies was founded, the number of registered clinical trials globally was fewer than 10 000. Today there are an estimated 350 000 clinical trials registered globally. The ambition of Viedoc then, as now, was to make clinical trials easy and more efficient.
Today the importance of speedy and efficient clinical trials has never been more relevant with the intense global effort to find treatments and, ultimately, a vaccine for Covid-19 as quickly and safely as possible.
From the time clinical trials were first used to end scurvy until today, the scientific methods and tools used in clinical trials have been vital in making the world a healthier place.
Let's celebrate that!
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