"Our November 19 meeting featured two speakers on the technology of clinical trials. This is of course a subject of growing interest not just to the research community but also to health care systems, which are hosting clinical trials in increasing numbers. The speakers were Matthew Seguin, Director of Clinical Knowledge Management of Capital Technology Information Services (CTIS) and Michael Taylor, Manger of Business Development for PhaseForward.
CTIS provides IT products and services to government, commercial and academic medical institutes (AMI) entities that are involved in the clinical trials process. It provide the methods and tools with which all of the stakeholders (sponsors, regulators, auditors, sites, physicians and patients) are able to reduce the time it takes to complete clinical trials, improve their productivity, and increase their efficiency. CTIS has a major contract with the National Cancer Institute.
Phase Forward is a leading provider of integrated data management solutions for clinical trials and drug safety. The company helps pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device companies bring needed drugs and therapies to market faster and more safely. Phase Forward offers proven solutions in electronic data capture (EDC), clinical data management (CDM), and adverse event reporting ( AER). Phase Forward products and services have been utilized in over 10,000 clinical trials involving more than 1,000,000 clinical trial study participants at over 200 organizations worldwide including: AstraZeneca, Biogen Idec, Boston Scientific, Cedars-Sinai, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Guidant, Procter & Gamble, Quintiles, Sanofi-Aventis, and Schering-Plough Research Institute.
We also had an extensive discussion of post-election developments at DHHS and on Capitol Hill, as well as the effect of recent whistle-blowing incidents on the FDA drug approval process."