Paper short abstract:

This study illuminates why busy, practicing, doctors agree to become investigators in clinical research, the benefits that the doctors expect from clinical trials and how they manage to maneuver their schedules to accommodate the time consuming research activity.

Paper long abstract:

Following a legal change in 2005 that provided stronger patent protection in India, multi-national pharmaceutical companies have been increasingly out-sourcing their clinical trials to the country. As on August 2011, there are approximately 1900 trials registered in the official Clinical Trials Registry of India (CTR-I). Since then, there have been both international as well as national criticisms suggesting that this shift is a form of exploitation of poor patients without any real benefits to the country, science community or local health needs. However, what actually happens on the ground and why trials are welcomed has not been thoroughly documented to date. As part of a research project entitled Biomedical and Health Experimentation in South Asia, in 2011 we conducted around 40 in-depth interviews in three tertiary care hospitals in India with medical doctors and junior research assistants who are the local mediators of these trials, about the conduct of experimental research. The principal investigators we interviewed were busy doctors, often heads of departments. These doctors are crucial to the implementation of a trial but their views on clinical research activities have not been analyzed. This study illuminates why busy, practicing, doctors agree to become investigators in clinical research despite their demanding schedules particularly when research is not an common part of medical practice in India. In this paper we describe the benefits that the doctors expect from clinical trials and how they manage to maneuver their schedules to accommodate the time consuming research activity.