If you search CRO in Costa Rica or CRO en Costa Rica, you should land on the First-in-Human CRO that already runs the CONIS / CEC file — not a brochure about a manufacturing cluster.
bioaccess® is that CRO. Headquarters in Miami. We run clinical trials in Costa Rica. CONIS and accredited-CEC clocks are a file problem, not a reason to leave the country.
I am Julio Martinez-Clark, CEO of bioaccess®. This is the operator page for the query. Colombia is a second country category, with a local Colombian entity, and we still run trials there. Costa Rica is not a replacement for Colombia. It is a country we already work.
What “CRO in Costa Rica” has to mean
A Costa Rica CRO for first-in-human devices is not a Latin America slide and a courier account. It is a company that can file in Spanish, sit a CONIS-accredited Comité Ético Científico (CEC), register the approved project with CONIS, pay the statutory 3% canon on the same budget the CEC forwarded, keep investigational import moving, and stay in the room after first patient in.
That is why this page does not invent a Costa Rican legal entity. We have not published one. Miami HQ plus in-country operations on the CONIS file is the line that is already live on the Costa Rica hub.
- Miami headquarters — sponsor desk on US Eastern time.
- Ley N.° 9234 — Ley Reguladora de Investigación Biomédica, already named on the hub.
- CONIS (Consejo Nacional de Investigación en Salud), an organ of the Ministry of Health (Ministerio de Salud).
- Accredited CEC written approval before enrollment.
- ~30–90 days typical ethics-plus-regulatory approval — the number already on the hub.
- 3% CONIS canon on the approved study budget — a statutory levy, not a CRO fee.
Global Phase 1 networks can list Costa Rica. They rarely hold the CONIS register and the CEC query cycle on the same clock. Local monitors can staff a visit. They rarely carry a Miami sponsor desk and a first-in-human device operating model together.
We run trials in Costa Rica
The old hub hero sold a “CONIS pathway” and a specialist-versus-platform comparison. That is not the category. The category is: who is the CRO in Costa Rica, and are they actually running the file.
We are. We still will. If you are choosing a CRO en Costa Rica in 2026, ask whether the firm owns CEC approval, CONIS registration, and the 3% canon as one activation calendar — not whether the country has a MedTech manufacturing cluster.
CEC review can move, stall, or come back with questions. CONIS registration can stall when the budget in the ethics pack and the budget used for the canon do not match. First-in-human programs need a start date someone owns. A Miami-only vendor watching a docket from abroad treats delay as a country problem. The CRO that already works CONIS treats delay as responses, ethics alignment, import, and site activation on one timeline.
That is Global Trial Accelerators™ in practice: one accountable operating model across CONIS, CEC, sites, insurance, importation, monitoring, and safety.
Two gates — not one ministry slogan
CONIS is the national clinical-research authority. It sits as an organ of the Ministerio de Salud. The live hub already names CONIS, Ley N.° 9234, and the accredited CEC. I am not inventing a new authority and I am not inventing a Costa Rican company name.
The live activation calendar — Costa Rica FIH Activation Calendar: CEC, CONIS Registration, and the 3% Canon — is the practitioner page behind those names. Costa Rica is a two-gate country. A CONIS-accredited CEC must give written approval before an interventional protocol can start. The approved project is then registered with CONIS. Those are different legal acts. If you collapse them into one “ministry clock,” you are not planning activation.
Instruments already cited on that live calendar:
- Ley N.° 9234 — Ley Reguladora de Investigación Biomédica (in force 25 April 2014; SCIJ current text).
- Decreto Ejecutivo N.° 39061-S — implementing reglamento, plus the reform Decreto N.° 39533-S.
- Decreto N.° 40884-S — organic reglamento of CONIS, on CONIS’s legislation index.
- ISO 14155 as the device GCP you will later defend to FDA under 21 CFR 812.28.
Those are authority-and-instrument names. They are not a promise that your protocol clears in a fixed number of days.
The hub already publishes ~30–90 days for typical combined ethics-plus-regulatory approval. The activation calendar is more granular: practitioner planning for a first-in-human implant is 4–8 weeks of ethics time including one query cycle, then CONIS registration and the canon, then institutional authorization and site activation. I will not publish a new hub median. Ask for a study-specific calendar.
Ley 9234 Article 46, already explained on that calendar, lets a public or private entity that hosts research constitute a CEC if CONIS accredits it. The same article requires the Ministry of Health to constitute a CEC responsible for approving Phase I clinical trials nationally. If your protocol is truly first-in-human — novel energy, a first implant, a first intra-cardiac or CNS contact — plan the ethics path as the Ministry CEC unless CONIS or the accredited committee you asked has confirmed in writing that a site CEC may take it. Guessing here is how a four-week ethics slot becomes a resubmission.
The 3% canon is a levy. Build it before you sign the site
Ley 9234 requires the principal investigator, when registering an approved biomedical-research project, to pay CONIS a sum equal to 3% of the total research budget. That sentence is already on the hub and on the activation calendar. Decreto 39061-S (canon provisions, as reformed) makes CONIS responsible for verifying that payment.
Do not treat the canon as a “CRO fee.” Independent, non-commercial research can be treated differently; a sponsored device first-in-human is not that case. If the budget in the ethics pack and the budget used for the canon do not match, registration stalls after you thought you were approved. bioaccess® puts the canon in the sponsor budget from the outset so the CEC and CONIS see the same number.
A clinical-trial authorization and a later Costa Rica commercial registration are different files. The activation calendar already says: do not let the activation calendar inherit a commercial story you have not written. This article does not quote LATAM Launch subscription pricing. That SKU lives on the market-access pages, not on a first-in-human hub.
Sites — no named hospital we operate
We contract sites. We do not operate a named Costa Rican hospital. A university hospital mentioned in a landscape piece is not a bioaccess® facility. If a site is CCSS or another public provider, Ley 9234’s institutional-authorization requirement is a real gate — already stated on the activation calendar. Private sites still need the legal representative of the institution to authorize the study. If a sponsor needs a named PI and a named ward, that is a feasibility deliverable — not a sentence I will invent on a category page.
FDA use of Costa Rican first-in-human data
Foreign clinical data can be eligible for FDA submission and review under 21 CFR 812.28 when the investigation meets good clinical practice as that rule defines it, including ethics-committee review and informed consent. bioaccess® designs Costa Rica studies with that FDA conversation in mind — electronic data capture, structured safety reporting, source data verification — under ISO 14155 and ICH-GCP, with proper CONIS / Ministry of Health authorization and accredited-CEC ethics approval.
Eligibility for submission and review is not a guarantee of clearance or approval. ISO 14155 is the device GCP standard we align the file to. It is not a stamp the FDA owes you.
Cost — use the numbers already on the hub
The Costa Rica hub already publishes the 3% CONIS canon and the ~30–90 day ethics-plus-regulatory band. I am not inventing a per-patient dollar band here. Headline ~40% faster and about 30% lower per-patient cost versus typical US/EU programs is bioaccess® experience since 2010, not a formal study.
Questions a sponsor should ask any CRO in Costa Rica
- Are you running clinical trials in Costa Rica now — not “historically”?
- Who owns the CEC clock and the CONIS registration when the file sits?
- Do you treat CEC approval and CONIS registration as two gates, or as one slogan?
- Is the 3% canon in the same budget the CEC will forward?
- For a true first-in-human implant, have you confirmed Ministry CEC versus a named site CEC in writing?
- Do you claim to operate a named hospital, or do you contract sites?
- Is later Costa Rica registration a second file, or are you mixing it into the trial quote?
- Will the study file be built for 21 CFR 812.28, and do you understand that eligibility is not clearance?
bioaccess® answers: trials running; Miami HQ and in-country operations; CONIS / CEC file owned as a file problem; ~30–90 days already on the hub; 3% canon budgeted as a levy; no named hospital we operate; later registration kept as a separate market-access file; FDA conversation designed in from day one.
How Costa Rica sits next to Colombia
Do not read this as “leave Colombia.” We still run clinical trials in Colombia. That country has a local Colombian entity and its own hub. Costa Rica is a country we already work. INVIMA stays INVIMA. CONIS stays CONIS. If a protocol fits both, say so and we will tell you which file opens first. We will not flip one country into the other.
See clinical trials in Colombia and clinical trials in Costa Rica.
How to start
If you need a CRO in Costa Rica / CRO en Costa Rica for a first-in-human or early-feasibility device study — or you also need a later, separate Costa Rica market-access file — contact bioaccess® through bioaccessla.com/contact.
Bring the protocol stage, device class, and whether the ethics path is Ministry CEC or a named CONIS-accredited site CEC. We will tell you how the CONIS clock would run. We will not tell you to leave the country. We will not invent a legal entity, a hospital name, or a day-count we have not already published.