DrugDev, a provider of technology-driven solutions that help investigators, sponsors and CROs conduct more trials together, has established the DrugDev Innovation Lab, a technology incubator designed to accelerate emerging solutions in clinical trial automation.

Led by Hugo Stephenson, M.D., DrugDev’s executive chairman, the DrugDev Innovation Lab will provide the guidance, capital resources and ecosystem necessary for smaller companies to scale their novel products into industry gold standard solutions.

Inaugural members of the DrugDev Innovation Lab via strategic partnership are electronic consent platform SecureConsent (formerly Consent Solutions, a division of Enforme Interactive) and consumer-centric product development company Applied Informatics, which has experience in semantic data processing and knowledge extraction from clinical trial protocols and electronic health records.

“As evidenced by our acquisitions of CFS Clinical and TrialNetworks, DrugDev is passionate about providing access to disruptive technologies that change the game of how clinical research is conducted,” said Stephenson. “The Innovation Lab—wholly owned and operated by DrugDev—is exciting because it will enable companies to improve their solutions and achieve their vision faster than would be possible alone. Keeping these solutions within an incubator environment allows them to adapt and evolve to meet rapidly changing market needs, while enabling customers to take advantage of these innovations with the confidence of DrugDev’s significant backing and support.”

SecureConsent—led by co-founders CEO Eric Delente and Susan Brink, DrPH, executive vice president of clinical products and services—is a platform for capturing and managing electronic informed consent on multiple devices. Global pharmaceutical companies and professional societies rely on SecureConsent to achieve enrollment goals faster with fully-informed participants and real-time tracking and data management. The company was founded in 2005 with a multi-disciplinary background including public health and education, and has since grown into a pioneer in the field of electronic consenting.

Applied Informatics is a provider of natural language processing, data mining and processing of electronic health records (EHRs). The company’s online platform, TrialX, includes novel semantic processing and knowledge extraction capabilities that help across the clinical trial recruitment continuum. Founders Dr. Chintan Patel and Dr. Sharib Khan are past winners of the Best Cancer Consumer Application (National Cancer Institute), Best Population Health Application Award (Office of the National Coordinator of Health) and Personal Health Record Innovation Challenge (Indivo/Smart).

DrugDev CEO Ibraheem Mahmood said, “In Hugo Stephenson, DrugDev has a proven innovator in clinical trials. Hugo was a pioneer in phase IV clinical trials, redefined patient populations on Mediguard and drove the development of the Project Coordination Center, the first-ever remote site management group at Quintiles. With his guidance, DrugDev’s capital and ultra-fast software prototyping resources, the DrugDev Innovation Lab will have the freedom to create tools and acquire technology needed to change the game of clinical research.”