Parexel International promoted Mark Goldberg to chief operating officer. He previously served as president of clinical research services and the firm’s technology division, Perceptive Informatics. “His appointment as COO is in recognition of his strong leadership skills and increasing responsibilities, especially as we have expanded our clinical development capabilities and global footprint, including the recent extension of our capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region,” said Josef von Rickenbach, the firm’s CEO.

Canada’s government announced a modest $1 million drug safety surveillance effort, to be lead by professors. “This network will give Health Canada an important additional source of evidence for the ongoing, proactive assessment of drug products throughout their lifecycle and will provide better post-market safety and effectiveness information on pharmaceuticals,” said Steven Fletcher, a Canadian politician. Here’s the link.

QualityMetric has developed QM Certified Scoring. The product is designed for researchers, clinicians, clinical trial administrators, and other health care administrators who insist on high quality and are committed to properly collecting, scoring, and interpreting health outcomes data. “Unfortunately, the do-it-yourself approach can, and has, resulted in significant data quality problems,” says Mark Kosinski, senior scientist and director of QualityMetric.

Merck said 48,500 plaintiffs in its $5 billion Vioxx settlement had completed their paperwork, and would start receiving their checks next month. Here’s a story.

“The Emerging Role of Postmarketing Clinical Research” is a new report published by Business Insights that uses detailed case studies to examine the latest issues surrounding Phase IV. The report explores the regulatory issues and requirements, affecting mandatory post-marketing trial conduct, and identifies the key components of effective Phase IV trial design and completion. You can buy the $4,000 report here.

Averion International opened an office in Kiev, Ukraine. The effort will be lead by Evgeny Levenko. Said Markus Weissbach, Averion International’s CEO: “The Ukraine offers access to large patient populations, motivated investigators and a multitude of medical universities/academic institutions, all of which are critical to the successful conduct of international trials for Averion’s clients. We are currently working on several oncology and cardiology studies in the Ukraine and intend to further expand the operations in the coming months.”

Have a news release? Send it to .