Nextrials is a small but visionary San Francisco-based electronic data capture (EDC) firm. It had some ideas that took competitors years to duplicate. Nextrials offered built-in patient randomization, drug supply and adverse-event reporting years ago. We last wrote about the firm here. When we recently checked in with Nextrials' president, founder and CEO Jim Rogers, he said…more...

At all large technology companies, innovation dies. Intel, Microsoft, Nokia, Intuit may claim to invent. But year after year, their ostensibly new products are indistinguishable from older ones. Could any ordinary human differentiate between phones or PCs from 2005 and 2010? Which are more glaring: the engineered security holes in Adobe's Flash plugin, or the file synchronization…more...

Earlier this month, we ran a two-part series about electronic data from the perspective of clinical sites. (The stories can be found here and here.) The frustration at sites is real. It’s deep. Given that industry urgently needs both EDC and clinical sites, the distress is likely to continue. None of the design constraints—on sponsors or on…more...

Investigator sites accept the need for technology like electronic data capture (EDC). But they remain puzzled about why some problematic EDC solutions are selected by clinical trial sponsor firms that seem indifferent to the operational problems created by such systems. “Sponsors and CROs really need to think about this,” says Christine Pierre, CEO of the 16-year-old site…more...