If ‘s dreams come true, she will soon have Australia’s (and New Zealand’s) clinical trials industry chatting online. Then, in a few years, the entire industry.

The former clinical research assistant (CRA) recently launched AccessCR: Clinical Research Information and Resources At Your Fingertips. It’s a portal designed to encourage discussion among people working in clinical trials in Australia. It’s also an information resource for members of the public interested in clinical trials. In some ways, it’s an Aussie competitor to Centerwatch, and in others it’s a unique forum.

In the future, she plans to enable sponsors and contract research organizations (CROs) to use the portal for recruiting patients. Oh, and Bowden would also like it to handle web-based intra-office communications for specific CROs and sponsors via private forums— or what she calls “the outsourcing of knowledge management.”

Clinical Myspace

Bowden, a resident of Sydney and an eight-year-veteran of the industry, was inspired by her own frustrations. She was chagrined by how infrequently people communicated and networked—either with their own coworkers about specific work matters, or with others in the industry.

And when they did interact, it was via phone and sometimes e-mail. Sponsors, CROs and clinical sites certainly weren’t leveraging the web for such communication, Bowden says. And she couldn’t understand why, given that it could make things so much faster, and, potentially, communal.

Encouraging Communication

“This industry is known for being on the cutting edge of research, but I don’t think they really harness the power of communication technology,” says Bowden.

She adds that people under age 30—more of whom are coming into the industry all the time—are accustomed to communicating online (think Facebook, Myspace). Her site will allow this segment of the industry to do what comes naturally to them.

And if sponsors don’t want their contract workers and employees getting all communal, they can opt to pay for a private forum so that workers can communicate in a silo, basically. There, they can, say, ask a question about good clinical practice (GCP) and get an answer from a coworker in real time, privately. Do sponsors have the resources to just set up such a system in-house? Yes, says Bowden, but from what she’s seen, they just don’t. 

Subscription Model

But folks will have to pay. For a subscription to the professionals-only part of her site, Bowden is charging $750 Australian (about $660 in U.S. currency) for a company’s first user, and $150 Australian (U.S. $132) for each subsequent user. Investigator site first-users will pay $490 Australian (U.S. $430), with subsequent users paying $120 (U.S. $105).

Bowden says that in Australia, there are a few hundred subsidiaries of sponsors who are based elsewhere, and there are lots of small biotechs. About 20 CROs do business there, four of which are based in Australia. The approval process typically takes about three months. No recent numbers exist on how many trials are currently under way on the continent. The most recent estimate is from June 2005–June 2006, when 739 trials were conducted there.

Regulatory Environment

The clinical trials industry in Australia is poised for growth as the government has recently put initiatives in place to speed up and streamline the approval process. Instead of requiring sponsors to approach each hospital’s ethics committee prior to a trial—which is what they have to do now—sponsors should soon be able to instead approach each Australian state’s ethics committee, as well as a larger federal body.

Bowden says that will be an improvement, bringing more sponsors to Australia and more users to her portal.

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Editor’s note: The site also contains information resources about conducting trials in Australia.