How Walgreens’s clinical trials business is performing as its two-year anniversary nears

Less than two years after entering the clinical trials business, Walgreens has made strides in increasing diverse representation in pharmaceutical trials, according to Ramita Tandon, the company’s chief clinical trials officer.

The retail pharmacy giant opened a clinical trials arm in June 2022 with the goal of diversifying trial participants, which have historically been overwhelmingly white and male.

After speaking at the ViVE digital health conference in Los Angeles on February 27, Tandon gave Healthcare Brew an update on the company’s performance.

Key accomplishments and challenges

Walgreens has signed more than 35 clinical trial contracts with drugmakers, including Prothena Biosciences and Freenome, Healthcare Brew previously reported, and has reached out to more than 4.5 million people across the US to recruit them into trials, Tandon said.

The company has also enrolled a significant number of diverse patients in trials; case studies show that nearly half of patients enrolling in Walgreens-managed clinical trials come from historically underserved populations, Tandon said. Comparatively, 75% of all US clinical trial participants were white in 2020, according to the FDA.

For a clinical trial studying a potential treatment for Alzheimer’s, participants that Walgreens recruited were 21% Hispanic/Latino, which is close to double the national average, according to a Walgreens case study shared with Healthcare Brew.

“It’s a huge win for us as we start to see this, but there’s more work to be done,” she said.

Walgreens has increased the number of US pharmacies designated as clinical trial hubs—or locations where Walgreens clinical staff can perform low acuity services that take place in trials, like screenings and blood draws—from 15 in mid-2023 to more than 25 today, according to Tandon. All Walgreens locations that have the space to do so could become designated trial centers, but the company is strategic about where it chooses to open hubs to make sure it’s targeting the desired patient populations, she added.

Artificial intelligence (AI) plays an important role in how Walgreens finds eligible patients, according to Tandon. She said Walgreens has data on more than 100 million people, so the company uses AI to sort and identify potential trial candidates.

“AI allows us to add some precision in the targeting, and then we bring in our scientists that can validate the outputs to make sure that we’re doing right by how we engage the patient population,” Tandon said.

One of the biggest challenges is getting people to see how clinical trials fit into the broader Walgreens healthcare strategy, Tandon said. The company wants to make sure that once patients are done participating in a clinical trial, they’re placed into a clinical care program that will help them continue to manage their health.

“We’re looking to carry that patient forward as we support the continuum of that patient’s journey,” Tandon said. “That’s important because we want to close care gaps […] Our messaging is that clinical trials are not stuck in this research space, but [that] it’s truly a cornerstone of our healthcare services within Walgreens.”

Looking ahead

As the clinical trials business matures, one of Walgreens’s goals is to train its pharmacists in clinical trial research, Tandon said. Walgreens recently started one such training program that any of the company’s tens of thousands of pharmacists can participate in to become a clinical research pharmacist.

Overall, Tandon said she’s pleased with how the clinical trials business has performed, and that Walgreens is committed to growing the business more.

“It’s not an easy business to be able to implement, but for us, it’s about making sure that we are being thoughtful, we’re being judicious, and we’re creating the right body of evidence,” Tandon said. “As we learn along the way, we iterate the business model. [...] We’re here for the long term.”