HYGEIA Managing Partner (Amin Jagani) recently attended a session of the ECHO program for Clinical Trialists, Investigators, and Biostatisticians. The Keynote Speaker, Dr. Lehana Thabane PhD, presented on the topic of “So, what if I have some missing data or patients in my clinical trial: what’s the big deal, and wouldn’t imputation solve the problem?”
Dr. Thabane revealed a staggering statistic: 90% of perinatal and neonatal trials had missing outcome data. Worse, 79% used “complete case analysis” – a method that essentially just ignores those patients. See full presentation attached. This isn’t a niche academic concern. Imagine 79% of your portfolio companies ignoring a massive chunk of their user data. You would call it an operational failure. In clinical trials, this failure creates a cascade of value-destroying consequences:
1. Increased Risk of Bias: You can no longer be sure the results are true.
2. Decreased Statistical Power: The trial may fail to find a real treatment effect, killing a promising drug.
3. Invalidated Results: The trial becomes uninterpretable, rendering it worthless for regulators, partners, and the market.
This is the “VC Operational Blindspot” we at HYGEIA see every day. For a summary of Dr. Thabane’s presentation, see link below to the article on HYGEIA’s LinkedIn Page.