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Five Pharma Companies to Share Clinical Researcher Data

File cabinets (waferboard/Flickr)
(waferboard/Flickr)

27 May 2014. Five pharmaceutical companies are joining together to share their files on researchers conducting clinical trials, to speed the administrative process of starting up new studies. The Investigator Databank is a joint project of Novartis, Janssen (a division of Johnson & Johnson), Merck, Eli Lilly and Co., and Pfizer, and administered by DrugDev, a clinical trials staffing systems service.

The database aims to improve the way clinical trials get off the ground, particularly locating suitable sites for trials. Investigator Databank collects key data on clinical researchers and the institutions where they work, such as the basic infrastructure of the sites and Good Clinical Practice training records. Good Clinical Practice is an international ethical and scientific quality standard for the conduct of trials involving human subjects in European Union countries, Japan, and the U.S. to encourage acceptance of clinical data by their regulatory authorities.

DrugDev says with the participation of these five companies the database now has data on nearly 180,000 researchers at some 50,000 sites, and covering 7,335 studies. These numbers, claims DrugDev, exceeds those reported in an authoritative report on the scope of clinical trials published last year and compiled by Tufts University.

Earlier this month DrugDev, based in London, acquired TrialNetworks, a developer of cloud-based  clinical trial tools and apps. The tools offered by TrialNetworks, say the companies, help clinical trial sites with study activation and patient enrollment and retention, while reducing time spent on administration.

DrugDev also offers a financial management and payment processing system for clinical researchers. The system was part of the acquisition by DrugDev last year of CFS Clinical, and developed in response to the Physician Payments Sunshine Act — a provision of the Affordable Care Act — calling for more transparency in payments made to physicians and teaching hospitals.

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