Drugmakers Tap Hospital Data For Clinical Trials

Finding patients for clinical trials is not so easy in the US, but a new test project ... hopes to speed the process and lower costs. Called the Partnership to Advance Clinical Electronic Research, or PACeR, the effort is a collaboration between five large drugmakers, 13 hospitals across New York, clinical research organizations, health information technology companies and regulators.

The idea is to cull data from hospital records that can be used to identify patients who may be appropriate for specific clinical trials. Along the way, the drugmakers hope to save money and hospitals are forecast to make up to $75 million a year. “This is going to be a game changer, making medicine more of a science and less of an art,” says John Murphy, senior director of clinical analytics for Quintiles Transnational, tells Bloomberg News.
How will it work? The drugmakers - those involved are Bayer, Roche, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer - would pay PACeR up to $200,000 to sift through the records of the hospitals to find patients whose profile would fit the criteria for a trial, according to Bloomberg, which notes the project is designed to comply with federal law that prevents hospitals, as well as doctors and insurers, from disclosing such info (read more on the PACeR site here).

From there, a hospital would contact a patient’s physician, but not before receiving approval from an ethics board, but no personal data can be accessed without patient consent...

http://www.pharmalot.com/2011/11/dru...inical-trials/

(wonder why the guy quoted is from a clinical research organization? And why this whole enterprise makes me very very anxious...madelyn)