All you have to do to find patients for clinical trials is advertise on Facebook and voila. Problem solved. That's the word from MediciGlobal. The company notes that for a recent trial that required adolescents and their mothers, the privacy violation social networking website found enough volunteers in less than six months. President and CEO Liz Moench said: "There are certain medical conditions that command anonymity, and people want to keep their medical condition private, especially when social stigma is a factor. However, when used effectively Facebook can increase the impact of recruitment campaigns and help to reduce the cost of clinical trials."

The FDA budget, believe it or not, can be located as a nearly invisible sliver in this interactive graphic on the New York Times website. The number quoted is only wrong by a factor of 1,000, which is fairly typical in the twilight of U.S. journalism. Look in the large "Health and Human Services" rectangle on the upper left.

Sparta Systems announced an alliance with Synertec. “As the life sciences sector has matured in Southeast Asia, Sparta Systems has sought ways to bring greater value to its customers and greater TrackWise product availability to prospects,” said Critz Chan, a managing director at Sparta Systems. Here's a release.

Almac announced that an executive will be speaking at a European conference. The company said Graham Nicholls, director of biostatistics for Almac’s technology division, will be speaking at next week's Clinical Trial Supply Europe meeting to be held in Barcelona, Spain. The topic: adaptive designs, with a consideration of drug supply issues such as manufacturing, packaging and patient randomization.

Activity at the FDA seems to be picking up. There is a new draft guidance document on drug safety, the title of which uses the word "electronic," which Congress only permits the agency to state once each decade. The agency is explicitly acknowledging the existence of important data sets in systems that were never designed for research. The new document is a gentle nudge toward having electronic pharmacovigilance plans incorporated in the study protocol. But some of the language concedes that some electronic health record (EHR) data will never be appropriate for regulatory or scientific purposes. "Investigators should also demonstrate that each data source contains sufficient clinical granularity to capture the exposures and outcomes of interest in the appropriate setting of care. For example, outpatient data sources that do not include linkage to hospitalization data would not be appropriate for studying safety outcomes likely to result in hospitalization," the document states.

Kendle announced a successor to founder Candace Kendle. She will turn the president and CEO titles over to her current chief operating officer, Stephen Cutler. Said Kendle: "With the company solidly positioned for growth in a strengthening market and an outstanding CEO successor and executive team in place, now is the right time for me to step into the role of a non-executive chairman." Christopher Bergen, executive VP, will leave the big contract research organization on May 1. Separately, in a major hiring coup, Jamie Macdonald will join the firm from Quintiles, assuming Cutler's job. He spent more than 15 years at Quintiles, most recently as "senior VP and head of global project management with direct responsibility for more than 1,000 associates and delivery of approximately $2 billion in annual service revenue," the company noted in a release.

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