$19 Million Median Cost for Pivotal Trials Drives Patients to Reddit for Chronic Condition Insights

Patrick Collison, co-founder of Stripe, has highlighted Reddit's growing significance as an "emergent intelligence" for individuals navigating chronic health conditions. In a recent social media post, Collison observed that the platform frequently serves as a crucial resource, bridging gaps left by traditional clinical trials, which he described as "slow and expensive."

Collison pointed to the substantial financial barrier to medical research, noting the median cost of a pivotal trial was $19 million in 2015, potentially escalating to $40 million today when adjusted for inflation and including other development phases. This high cost, coupled with the absence of intellectual property (IP) protection for interventions such as dietary changes, over-the-counter supplements, and lifestyle modifications, often discourages funding for rigorous studies in these areas. For instance, the widely held belief that magnesium improves sleep in non-elderly adults remains largely untested by formal trials.

The tech executive characterized Reddit's informal environment as fostering a "limited kind of 'compounding knowledge'," where patients can share experiences and identify effective practices. He recounted numerous stories from individuals who found their conditions "much more manageable" or even discovered "a permanent cure in a weird comment buried deep in a thread" through these online communities. This patient-driven data collection is exemplified by a recent Long COVID study, which surveyed 3,900 individuals on 150 treatments, revealing that "about half of people find that antihistamines are helpful."

Collison expressed interest in scaling this approach, pondering the creation of a formalized "observational, self-reported clinical trial" platform. Such a platform would cover major chronic conditions, administer ongoing surveys, and track longitudinal outcomes, aiming to systematically gather and analyze the "latent data in patients’ subjective experiences" that is currently underutilized. This initiative seeks to provide a structured alternative between individual physician insights and the comprehensive, yet often inaccessible, rigor of clinical trials.