Roy Vagelos may be retired, but he remains a legend all the same. The former Merck leader spoke at this year’s Clinical Trials Congress.
His remarks covered a lot of ground. In a 14-minute podcast, we include two key sections of his presentation.
The first concerns the company’s development of a cure (yes, that’s the right word) for river blindness in sub-Saharan Africa. He provided a succinct and graceful case history of the power of razor edge science—of the real-world impact of the industry’s tools when they are brought to bear in ways that no well-meaning university, government or foundation can match.
The second portion of his talk was more controversial. He refers, in passing, to the blockbuster product of a certain California division of a major Swiss pharma. Vagelos also sounds a polite, gentle warning note about how big the industry is getting. What he has to say about the industry’s pricing policies may cause some readers to squirm. But in a context of a U.S. government facing unprecedented financial constraints, not to mention political pressure for health care reform, the industry may want to consider the words of one of its senior statesmen.
September 3, 2010
Michael Ibara, head of pharmacovigilance information management at Pfizer, discusses the intricacies of how to manage drug safety data in an increasingly electronic age. But the context of his remarks is much larger, and involves how both industry and government may be able to convince the public that all reasonable measures are being made to keep medicines as safe as possible.
Roy Vagelos may be retired, but he remains a legend all the same. The former Merck leader spoke at this year’s Clinical Trials Congress.
In 2009, it is easier and more feasible to connect two vast data cosmos that have long existed separately. The electronic data capture (EDC) systems for clinical research are slowly being connected to larger, more general-purpose electronic health record (EHR) systems for physicians.
As a trustee of the Society for Clinical Data Management (SCDM), Paul Clarkson is the archetype of the data manager who understands the largest issues affecting clinical development. As director of data management at Genentech, he’s been thinking about how data managers can help their organizations develop better protocols.
The burden of day-to-day responsibilities does not always allow for appropriate reflection on the future. The Society for Clinical Data Management is trying to address that next month in its annual Leadership Forum.
Gartner’s Carol Rozwell is one of the industry’s leading authorities on technology adoption and clinical data standards. In this illuminating interview with ClinPage editor Mark Uehling, she discusses why some organizations hesitate to use CDISC standards and how some contract research organizations (CRO) have recently begun to see data standards differently.
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