In our experience running trials in the region since 2010, total clinical trial costs in Chile land around 30% of comparable US or EU budgets. The discount is structural, not a quality trade: for medical device studies, a single ethics gate replaces multi-layer review, and experienced Chilean sites execute to ISO 14155 Good Clinical Practice.
The ~30% figure is our observed experience across trials run in Latin America since 2010 — not a quote and not a promise for any specific protocol. It reflects three structural drivers. First, site and procedure costs in Chile run well below US and EU levels while the clinical standard stays international. Second, the authorization path for medical device studies has exactly one protocol gate — an accredited Ethical-Scientific Committee (Comité Ético Científico, CEC) — so sponsors are not funding months of stacked regulatory consulting across multiple review layers. Third, the 45-day CEC decision clock (extendable once by 20 days, Decreto Supremo 114 of 2010) compresses the start-up burn: the most expensive phase of any trial is the phase where nothing is enrolling.