With more than two decades in the industry under his belt, Jeffrey Trotter had his own contract research organization (CRO) for more than a decade. He sold it—twice. And now he's helping to shepherd the late-phase strategy at PharmaNet Development Group, where his title is executive VP, Phase IV development. He supervises a 50-person group dedicated to…more...

Some people are happy with incremental progress. A long career in drug safety has left Michael Ibara searching for a bigger leap forward. He's the architect of a potential alternative to the present drug safety morass of paper, faxes, and inefficiency. As head of pharmacovigilance information management at Pfizer, Ibara organized the Aster project, an exploration of…more...

If pharmacovigilance were a movie, it would be Groundhog Day, except as a tragedy. Here's the plot. Reports of adverse events (AE) pop up and take years to be evaluated. The associated recriminations bounce between various interested parties. Good drugs exit the market. Bad ones linger. The industry's reputation gets bludgeoned either way. Luck is at work,…more...

Is electronic data capture (EDC) creating inefficiencies? That's one conclusion to be drawn from the interim results of an eClinical Forum survey. Surprisingly, the survey suggests that the use of paper case report forms (CRF) is rising even amid growing adoption of EDC. While most sponsors are committed to EDC, site staff believe it is forcing them…more...