When You REALLY Need a Clinical Trial

Important, Not Important

Let’s say you get sick.

Diabetes. Cancer. Heart disease. Long COVID. PTSD. MS. Depression. Alzheimer’s

Despite the best efforts of your physician, nothing’s working. They’re out of answers, and you’re out of questions. You might both be increasingly out of time.

Where do you turn?

There must be someone, somewhere, working on your problem. Working to better understand it, at least, maybe to treat it, maybe cure it, or prevent it for the next person who might be susceptible to getting it.

How do you find out if they exist? And if they do, how do you find them?

How could you volunteer for their work, knowing they might not have the answers – but knowing you won’t know and they won’t know – until you try?

For almost twenty-five years the best answer has been to visit a government-run website called clinical trials dot gov. I know because I’ve sent tens of thousands of people to it, for help.

But even if you are able to sort through a Windows 95-era database and find the trial that’s right for you – what if it’s hundreds of miles away?

So many of us could benefit from better awareness and better access to cutting-edge research that could save the lives of people we love.

And so many researchers are frustrated by the inability to sign people like you, your daughter, or your dad up for their trial.

It’s 2022. We can Do Better Better.

My guest today is Brandon Li.

Brandon is the co-founder of Power, the new and arguably most patient-friendly platform for clinical trials ever made. Brandon and his team are making it easy for all patients to use Power to discover promising clinical trials and get in touch with the researchers – directly.

My mission is outcome-based – to connect you with the most measurable ways to take action, feel better, and drive systemic change. There’s so much we can do to rebuild public health, to do the basic shit we need to do to take care of one another.

But simultaneously, by increasing the success of vastly more inclusive clinical trials, we can accomplish all of those goals at the same time.

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INI Book Club:

• Open: An Autobiography by Andres Agassi
• Find all of our guest recommendations at the INI Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-club

Links:

• Find a clinical trial near you with Power
• Follow Brandon on Twitter
• Are you a PI, sponsor, or CRO looking to work with Power? Connect with Brandon.

Factcheck:

• The following stat from the episode: "self-directed research into clinical trials has grown 22X in the last seven years" was determined using the web analytics tool, ahrefs.

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• Edited by Anthony Luciani
• Produced by Willow Beck
• Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com
• Artwork by Amrit Pal