The world of medicine is continuously striving to find cures and treatments for an endless list of ailments and conditions. Sometimes, an illness is deemed concerning enough for a global reaction to find a cure or preventative solution, such as the recent development of the COVID-19 vaccine. However, research and clinical trials for all sorts of other conditions are continuously taking place in an attempt to improve the health and lives of people all over the world.
From manageable conditions like food allergies and asthma to life-threatening cancers and mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety, clinical trials are necessary for developing safe treatments no matter the condition. Every medical treatment you receive, from prescription medications to over-the-counter remedies, has to have undergone clinical trials before it becomes available to the public.
But which conditions receive the most spending to get new treatments to the public? And where do the majority of these clinical trials take place? To find this out, NiceRx has delved into the data to explore clinical trial spending in the USA, and reveal the states and countries that are at the forefront of new medicine development.
Clinical trials come in many shapes and forms, depending on what is being studied. These can range from attempting a new surgery, to testing a new drug or simply observing the health outcomes of people from different groups and backgrounds. Here are the proportions of the different types of study conducted since 2000, as of January 23, 2021.
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Study type |
Intervention type |
Number of registered studies |
Percentage of total |
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Having looked at the different types of clinical trials, we now turn our attention to the number of new clinical studies each year since 2001, and whether this figure has been rising or falling.
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Study type |
Intervention type |
Percentage of total |
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The yearly number of new clinical trials started off at around 1800. This figure remained below 4,000 for several years before seeing a huge increase in 2005, with the number of new studies reaching 12,798. This represents the largest percentage increase on record, with a rise of 304.23%.
Since then the number of new clinical trials has steadily increased each year other than 2006 and 2009, both of which saw minor dips in new studies. Overall, the yearly number of new studies has risen by around 35,200 to 37,032 in 2021.
Here we can see which countries are conducting the most clinical studies from all over the world.
Total number of studies
The country with by far the most clinical trials is the USA, where there are 148,736 currently on record. This huge number of trials is testament to the dominance and size of the US pharmaceutical industry and positions the country at the forefront of global medicine development.
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Country |
Total number of studies |
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Not all countries are as large as the United States, so in order to level the playing field between nations, we have calculated how many clinical studies there are in each country per 100,000 people.
Studies per 100,000 people
Denmark is the country with the most clinical studies per head, with 162 studies per 100,000 people. This northern European country between Germany and Sweden is well ahead of any other nation in terms of clinical studies for its size, with second place Belgium only having 98 studies per 100,000 people, for comparison.
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Country |
2020 Population |
Total Number of Studies |
Studies per 100,000 |
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Turning our attention to the USA specifically, we wanted to break down the country’s clinical trials to the state level, allowing us to see where in the country conducts the most clinical studies.
Total number of studies
The state with the highest number of studies is California, which recorded a total of 39,041 trials. As the largest state-level economy in the USA, and with a reputation for tech and innovation, it should come as little surprise that California takes the top stop spot with a margin of over 7,000 clinical trials.
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State |
Total number of studies |
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Again, to get a better idea of which states conduct the most studies for their size, we have calculated the number of trials per 100,000 people, allowing us to compare the states on a more level playing field.
Studies per 100,000 people
The state that conducts the most clinical trials per head is Rhode Island, where there are 376 trials per 100,000 people. This small, coastal state is followed by Vermont on 327 studies per 100,000, with Nebraska taking third place on 321.
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State |
Population |
Total Number of Studies |
Studies per 100,000 |
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We now turn our focus to the conditions that receive the most research funding to conduct clinical studies and trials. This gives us an idea of the conditions that are most concerning to society at the present time.
2020 research funding
Cancer is the health condition that receives the most research funding of all, with $7.035 billion being spent on finding treatments and cures in 2020 alone. This vast sum highlights the difficulty of creating effective treatments for cancer, as well as the problem of there being such a wide variety of forms of cancer. In addition to these difficulties, this huge spend shows that cancer has become a tremendously important challenge to health researchers, both due to its widespread nature and fatal outcomes.
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Condition |
2020 research funding |
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We’ve also noted which conditions are predicted to see the largest increase in funding for 2022. We have ranked these by the simple increase from 2020 levels to the projected 2022 spend, while also providing this increase as a percent change.
Projected increase in funding
In addition to being the condition with the most funding for clinical trials, cancer is also set to receive the largest increase in funding in 2022, rising by a projected $400 million from 2020 levels. This represents an increase of 5.69% in research spending.
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Condition |
2020 research funding |
Estimated 2022 funding |
Projected change |
% change |
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We wanted to assess the world of clinical trials to find out which parts of the world conduct the most studies, and which conditions receive the most research funding. To do this, we used data from the U.S. National Library of Medicine to find the total number of clinical studies taking place in 70 different countries, as well as each of the 50 states. We then used data from the National Institutes of Health to assess how much funding different conditions receive for clinical studies and trials.
We then used population data from the World Bank and Wikipedia to calculate the number of clinical studies in each country and state per 100,000 people, allowing us to compare countries and states of different sizes on a level playing field.
