HealthCarePoint (HCP), a Texas-based healthcare and clinical research networking technology corporation, is pledging more than $10 million in technologies and infrastructure services to ACRES, the Alliance for Clinical Research Excellence and Safety, a Cambridge-based nonprofit organization established to develop a global system for improving quality, safety, ethics and operational effectiveness in drug development and health research.

HealthCarePoint’s initial pledge of $10 million in software and technology infrastructure includes 10,000 licenses of its proprietary Personal Experience and Training Accounts for Business and Compliance (PET-ABC) Management Systems, an HR electronic file used by organizations to maintain compliance of employee and contractor Personal Experience and Training (PET) records at the local level, while allowing investigative sites and industry organizations to share information via opt-in permission-based networks.

ACRES will distribute the PET-ABC networking software free to industry organizations such as sites, IRBs, sponsors, CROs, regulatory agencies, universities, government and others involved in clinical research, and those who have a stake in maximizing human subject protection. The application already has saved industry partners millions of dollars in time, resources and technology costs internationally over the past five years.

The initial collaborative agreement, which includes an option for ACRES to receive additional licenses and other technology services valued at $10 million more as the global network grows, is part of a strategic alliance between HCP and ACRES projected to save the industry millions of dollars in technology infrastructure, and potentially billions more, by improving safety, quality and efficiency and by reducing waste and redundancies within 10 years or less.

“The rapid pace of adoption of the Personal Experience and Training (PET) accounts and the use of the PET-ABC management systems by healthcare and clinical research organizations demonstrates the value of this technology to the entire industry,” said Al O. Pacino, HealthCarePoint president. “We believe that clinical research organizations are ready to move beyond the inefficient 'silo-based' models and into more efficient networking systems for sharing symbiotic information. Our decision to provide this technology through ACRES reflects HealthCarePoint’s belief that industry leaders and ACRES’ visionary and comprehensive approach to development of a shared global system to support the clinical research endeavor is in our best interest for achieving these goals.”

“By giving ACRES the ability to distribute our established technologies free of charge to industry, we hope to eliminate many of the current financial hurdles standing in the way of progress,” he said. “We also hope that, by establishing proven permission-based opt-in networks, we can help eliminate the fears associated with information-sharing between individuals and organizations and benefit the industry as a whole.”

"We are very pleased and grateful that HCP has taken this important first step toward enabling ACRES’ global systems approach to improving clinical research,” said Greg Koski, Ph.D., M.D., president and CEO of ACRES. “To overcome the many challenges and inefficiencies of the clinical research process, tools are needed to allow archiving for local compliance and real-time sharing of important information about professionals at clinical research sites and their full time, contracted and part-time staff. ACRES goal as a nonprofit organization is not to benefit ACRES — our goal is to collaboratively build a shared global networking system that will help the entire industry work more effectively to facilitate the discovery, testing and development of new medicines, biologics, vaccines and devices to improve health and benefit the people of the world.”