OnCo
ideasIdea

Report time toxicity, the days a treatment consumes, in every trial and decision aid

Alongside how many months a treatment adds, patients should be told how many days it takes from them in clinics, infusions, scans and recovery.

Time toxicity (days with in-person healthcare contact) has been proposed as a formal endpoint and, when reanalysed from trials of drugs offering weeks of benefit, can consume much of the survival gain. The proposal is that trials report days at home versus days in contact with healthcare for each arm, that regulators and guideline bodies display it, and that decision aids present it alongside survival and side-effects.

Hypothesis
When time toxicity is presented, a meaningful share of patients with marginal-benefit palliative treatments choose differently, and sponsors design regimens with fewer visits.
Rationale
Patients weigh time differently from clinicians; the metric is computable from trial case report forms already collected.
What would test it
Reanalyse ten recent pivotal trials to report time toxicity; then randomise presentation of the metric in a decision-aid study and measure choice and regret.
Maturity
early clinical
Who has to act
research
Cost to try
Small (under $1M)
Years to first evidence
2
Bottlenecks it attacks

Connected

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