I take this occasion to talk about pediatric clinical studies and to assess the main challenges and also the opportunities when these are compared with adult studies. I will look into this landscape and as an example I will use a case report for a currently ongoing clinical study to be conducted on children and adolescents with secondary hyperthyroidism and vitamin D deficiency.

• Ethics in clinical trials
• Definition of vulnerable groups
• Pediatric studies, including regulations
• Pediatric and Adult studies: main differences, challenges and opportunities
• Conclusions and Take-home messages

When prescribing an innovative medication, physicians together with their patients make a benefit-risk evaluation based on the drug´s potential benefits and also outweigh the potential risks experienced by study patients. This patient’s experienced value of the new health technology is a requirement and precondition for regulatory and payer approval. So, how and when to engage patients?
The drug developer should recognize the value of patient’s involvement from the very beginning, even before the product enters clinical development and should continue across the entire life cycle and work to adapt present perceptions and practices throughout their organizations. Supposed individual patient’s needs and perspectives are put at the heart of all efforts from clinical development to regulatory approval and HTA. In that case, these insights should be shared with patients and prescribers to better inform and guide treatment decisions, thus enhance patient-centred care and personalized medicine.

• Pharmaceutical development has to demonstrate the value of the new health technology relative to the outcomes experienced by patients
• Patient engagement works, when the involvement starts already during the early stages of development