A commercial North Carolina institutional review board (IRB), Copernicus Group IRB, has received ISO 9001 certification. The company has a paperless system to manage clinical trial forms. “To our knowledge, CGIRB is the only central IRB that has achieved this certification. It is further evidence to our clients and the subjects of research studies that the quality…more...

Large life science companies have fired untold tens of thousands of employees during every year of the ongoing downturn—a period of both financial chaos and pharmaceutical mega-mergers. Here's one estimate, and another. Yesterday, having digested Schering Plough, Merck announced it would terminate 15,000 people and close eight research locations. Which doesn't mean the research industry is devoid…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...

Most of the ClinPage podcasts are done in a pretty typical Q&A format. Today, however, we're posting a different type of audio: some snippets from the 2009 Clinical Trials Congress, held earlier this year. We thank the Institute for International Research (IIR), which organizes a fabulous conference every year, for their permission to do this. The speaker…more...