Electronic Health Records gain ground in clinical research

A decade ago, Isaac Kohane, M.D., Ph.D., Marion V. Nelson Professor & Chair, Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School, decided to tackle a major problem: each Harvard-affiliated hospital operated its own unique, siloed system of electronic storage and data management. Kohane, a physician and data information engineer, wanted to link the disparate systems to improve clinical research. It wouldn’t be easy, requiring a massive amount of funding, technical expertise and an epic collaboration between sometimes competitive hospitals, but he hoped that if his team could pull it off, the Harvard model might pave the way for the future of electronic health data sharing in the U.S.

Assessing the strategic impact of supply chain management

The globalization of clinical trials and more complex protocols, which include adaptive designs and those for targeted therapies, have driven the need for new practices and strategies to reduce waste and inefficiencies in the clinical supply logistics area. Managing global clinical trial supply logistics has become more difficult and unpredictable as clinical trials are conducted at larger numbers of investigative sites and countries worldwide.

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