The World Health Organization (WHO) says it is improving access to online data about clinical trials. It launched a web portal leading to several leading national databases about clinical trials. WHO says a “significant proportion” of trial research is never published, meaning doctors can lack information about treatment options. WHO…more...

Russia is on track to become the next big clinical research market; global pharma R&D spending is projected to top $100 billion in 2007. That’s part of the State of the Clinical Trials Industry 2007, an annual sourcebook produced by Thomson CenterWatch, a leading provider of information and solutions to…more...

Global pharmaceutical companies are increasingly turning to Indian vendors offering drug discovery research using newer techniques at much lower costs. Major drug discovery companies are realizing that the question is no longer whether to outsource or not, but one of finding the right partners. The latest publication from ValueNotes, a…more...

San Francisco’s Decision View, a provider of interactive patient recruitment tracking and simulation tools, announced the immediate availability of StudyOptimizer 3.5. Designed for sponsors, contract research organizations and academic medical centers, StudyOptimizer 3.5 automates the clinical recruitment process with integrated predictive modeling, analytics, simulation and rich visualization capabilities resulting in…more...

The U.S. Senate began discussion of a bill to beef up spending on drug safety. UPI reports that a new $30 million program would be used for surveillance of drug safety issues. That would be part of a new total of $300 million in user fees charged to the industry…more...

Bio-Innova and Synchron Co, a Thai-Indian joint venture, is Thailand’s first contract research organization (CRO) to provide clinical research services that test new medical treatments on human volunteers, and with technological support from the global-level expert research company, Synchron. Bio-Innova & Synchron will also join government agencies to help push…more...

Clinipace, a clinical research software company focusing on clinical trials and patient registries, has announced the launch of its Empowered Partner Program (EPP). In response to the industry’s need for highly configurable clinical software, Clinipace is offering small and medium-sized CROs a tailored and proven clinical technology suite to include…more...

Geospiza and Pharmaceutical Services Corporation (PSC) announced an alliance to deliver software and services to manufacturers of personalized therapies and vaccines based on genetic markers. Under the terms of the agreement, PSC will offer a complete solution of Geospiza software and PSC services to reduce operational costs and regulatory risks…more...

CDISC is meeting in Switzerland, and Fast Track Systems has participated in a demonstration project at the conference. Fast Track used its trial planning tool to populate several different electronic data capture systems with the same study protocol. Using the CDISC operational data model (ODM), the EDC systems then generated…more...

When (and how) should clinical trial endpoints be changed? The open-source journal PLoS Clinical Trials has a fascinating article on the topic. The author is Scott Evans, a biostatistician at Harvard. He notes some journal editors would like to move away from using any industry-funded biostatisticians, in favor of those…more...