Montana has signed a "right to try" law letting patients with severe diseases access experimental drugs not yet approved by the FDA. Brody, a two-and-a-half-year-old with developmental delays, is the human face of a rule that promises hope but offers no guarantees. The federal right to try has been around since 2018; states are now forcing the pace.
Why it matters. Right to try sounds like a victory for free choice in healthcare. In practice, it shifts risk from the manufacturer to the patient. Doctors can prescribe a drug without clinical data, controlled trials, or real evidence. Europe has a more cautious compassionate-use system, but it is painfully slow. Bureaucracy kills, yes — but so does recklessness. For healthtech companies in Italy, this is the real issue: we lack the infrastructure to collect data from patients using experimental treatments.
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Italian SMEs have an opportunity. The right to try is pointless if we do not learn from every attempt. We need real-world data platforms, clinical registries, and monitoring tools that turn compassionate use into shared knowledge. This country is behind. We see it daily: hospitals without structured data, vendors selling software that does not integrate. Companies investing in interoperability and data quality will win the next decade. Not those selling magic apps. AI and data can change that — but only if the European regulatory framework allows it and companies invest in product, not hype.
Our position
We believe right to try is a patch, not a cure. The real problem is not access to experimental drugs; it is a validation system that is too slow and too expensive. Speeding up permissions without building a data infrastructure is the worst way to manage patients' hopes. We at Meteora Web do not make health policy, but we build digital tools. And we know that without measurement there is no improvement. It applies to e-commerce, it applies to care. Real innovation means building tools that provide answers, not rules. The nightmare is trusting your child's life to a drug nobody really understands yet.
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What to do. If you work in healthcare, research, or software, start with a registry. A simple, secure, interoperable way to collect data from patients on experimental treatments. If you are an entrepreneur, approach clinical centers, learn their workflows, design a GDPR-compliant platform that produces evidence. Those who wait for the system to improve on its own will stay behind. Hope needs data.
