There are not enough minorities, seniors and children included in trials of drugs for minorities, seniors and children. That’s simply bad for society and industry. That’s one of the main thrusts of the Eliminating Disparities in Clinical Trials (EDICT) report, released recently by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in…more...

They were going to the same meetings. Seeing each other in the same airports. Bidding on the same projects. One thing lead to another. Then, just yesterday, ClinPhone and invivodata announced a global marketing alliance for electronic patient-reported outcomes. The press release is here. It’s the latest sign that the…more...

Want science with that? That question hangs over the recent acquisition of 35-employee Fast Track Systems by Medidata Solutions, a leading electronic data capture (EDC) vendor. The deal (but no price) was announced in March. It is an intriguing and potentially game-changing event in the clinical trial technology sector. The…more...

There are a plethora of small conferences in our industry. They address topics as diverse as electronic patient-reported outcomes, (ePRO), eclinical technology, regulatory affairs, patient recruitment and outsourcing. These meetings can be quite broad (the Clinical Trials Congress) or sharply focused (The Advanced Import Compliance Forum). Many of these conferences…more...

Every other day, Adil Shamoo says he gets an inquiry about something untoward in a clinical trial. Shamoo, whose day job is professor of molecular biology, epidemiology and preventive medicine at the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine, is also the founder of Citizens for Responsible Care and Research (CIRCARE).…more...

It is not hard to find technologies that the clinical trial community should, by all rights, use. But doesn’t. For whatever cultural or psychological reason. Much like a batty collector of small porcelain figurines, ClinPage counts itself oddly pleased to be able to have found yet another type of software…more...

Maybe it’s the medical school ambiance. Or the end of a long Boston winter. But every year, for mysterious reasons, the Post Approval Summit feels a bit different than other meetings. It’s a little cozier. More intimate. The conference is held in the spring in an auditorium at Harvard Medical…more...

Outsource, outsource, outsource. It seems to be a mantra that has hit even clinical trials these days. The list of companies with significant data management outsourcing seems to keep growing. Wyeth, Eli-Lilly, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, to name a few. How is it that this situation has arisen? From a variety of…more...

Amgen is the place to work, apparently. That’s if you consider the 2008 Executive Compensation Report, just published by BioWorld. It shows the Thousand Oaks, CA-based firm’s CEO, CFO and COO all garnered the highest compensation for their positions in the landscape of publicly traded biotech firms in the U.S.…more...

The 2008 Clinical Trials Congress had deep tracks of sessions around patient recruitment and trial budgeting. The familiar paradox is that as more sponsors seek more patients, patients become even more scarce. But now that conventional wisdom seems to be upside down. Instead of the familiar refrain of more patients,…more...