Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 90% certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

Collison: Median clinical trial enrollment costs $40,000 per patient

Patrick Collison · Dave Ricks, CEO of Eli Lilly, on GLP-1s and the business of pharma · Nov 11, 2025 · at 10:32

Patrick Collison discusses clinical trial economics with Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks.

0:00 / 0:05exact quote · 5.1s

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“The median clinical trial enrollee, it now costs 40,000 dollars.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

The median clinical trial enrollee now costs $40,000.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

Patrick Collison's statement that the median clinical trial enrollee costs $40,000 accurately reflects published peer-reviewed healthcare economics literature and clinical trial benchmark data. A landmark 2020 cross-sectional study in BMJ Open (Moore et al.) analyzing 225 FDA pivotal clinical trials found an estimated median cost per participant of $41,413 (IQR: $29,894 to $75,047). Furthermore, subsequent health economics modeling published in October 2024 explicitly adopted $40,000 per enrollee as the standard baseline cost for Phase III clinical trial patients, and industry benchmark reports (e.g., Sofpromed, 2024) cite $41,117 to $41,413 as the standard median per-patient cost.

BMJ Open (Moore et al., 2020) analyzed 225 pivotal clinical trials and determined the estimated median cost per participant was $41,413.
Health economics literature indexed on PMC/NIH (October 2024) applies a standard baseline assumption of $40,000 in direct trial costs per patient enrolled in Phase III clinical trials.
Industry benchmarking reports in 2024–2025 cite $41,117 to $41,413 as the benchmark median cost per patient in pivotal FDA trials.

Checked against

[1] meritcro.com [2] nih.gov [3] nih.gov [4] sofpromed.com [5] sofpromed.com [6] abacum.ai [7] abacum.ai [8] abacum.ai

cost per patient clinical trial benchmark Tufts ASPE 40000 median cost per patient clinical trial JAMA OR health affairs OR Tufts clinical trial cost per patient median 40000 median cost per clinical trial enrollee 40000 "cost per patient" "clinical trial" "ASPE" "Sertkaya"

assessed as of 2026-09-03

This assessment is an AI reading of a public statement, made against the cited references with the confidence shown. It can be wrong. The quote, the tape and the references are all on this page; if something is off, use report an error below. full disclaimer →

Mentioned

clinical trial enrollee

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Collison: Median clinical trial enrollment costs $40,000 per patient

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