# One national master contract and budget template for all cancer trials

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr1-national-master-trial-agreement/  
OnCo record `idea-tr1-national-master-trial-agreement` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Contract negotiation between a hospital and a drug company often takes longer than the trial's first patient. A single pre-agreed contract and budget template, used by everyone, would cut months off opening a trial.

## Summary

A government or national research body publishes a non-negotiable model clinical trial agreement (the UK's model agreements and Accelerated Clinical Trial Agreement are precedents) plus a standard per-procedure budget schedule. Sites and sponsors that adopt it skip legal negotiation; adopters are listed publicly and public funders require adoption. Extend the same to a standard data-sharing clause and a standard indemnity.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Countries or networks adopting a mandatory model agreement will reduce median site activation time by at least 60 days and increase the number of sites opened per trial.
- Rationale: UK sites using the model agreement report shorter set-up; the variance in contracts adds cost without protecting anyone. Standardisation of routine legal instruments has worked in property, finance and open-source licensing.
- Proposed test: Compare median site activation time and sites-per-trial in networks before and after mandatory adoption, using registry-recorded activation dates.
- Maturity: early-clinical
- Actor: policy

## Sources

- Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative: https://ctti-clinicaltrials.org/

## Connected records

- collections: [ClinicalTrials.gov](https://onco.cc/collections/clinicaltrials-gov/), [EU Clinical Trials Register / CTIS](https://onco.cc/collections/eudract-ctis/)
- institutions: [Cancer Research UK](https://onco.cc/institutions/cruk/), [National Cancer Institute (NIH)](https://onco.cc/institutions/nci/)
- bottlenecks: [Regulatory divergence between regions](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-regulatory-fragmentation/), [Trials enrol too few, too slowly](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-trial-enrolment/)

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