Pfizer Launches Collaborative Virtual Clinical Trial

Pfizer is borrowing a page from open source collaborative projects and has launched an innovative approach to clinical trials as reported in the Wall Street Journal. Pfizer has adopted a series of tools and technologies that have enabled it to start an all-electronic, home-based clinical trial. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given approval to the remotely monitored trial, the first one ever. Pfizer recruited the participants through ads in the Internet and is monitoring the trial using smartphone and computer-based telemedicine tools.

Pfizer is borrowing a page from open source collaborative projects and has launched an innovative approach to clinical trials as reported in the Wall Street Journal. Pfizer has adopted a series of tools and technologies that have enabled it to start an all-electronic, home-based clinical trial. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given approval to the remotely monitored trial, the first one ever. Pfizer recruited the participants through ads in the Internet and is monitoring the trial using smartphone and computer-based telemedicine tools. Pfizer is using the clinical trial to test to an existing drug, Detrol, which is used to control overactive bladder symptoms.

Pfizer hopes that the adoption of mobile technology together with collaborative approaches for conducting home based clinical trials will lower the cost and improve the efficiency of future clinical trials. Pfizer has the largest drug R&D budget of any pharmaceutical company in the world, $9.4 billion a year an can potentially realize significant savings.

Tomasz Sablinski who recently launched Transparency Life Sciences, an open-source drug development enterprise, told FierceBiotechIT that the Pfizer project '”is a godsend." If it succeeds, it validates his concept for the fledgling open-source Transparency Life Sciences.” Sablinski also emphasized the significant contribution that telemedicine tools can make to drug research, tools that until now the Pharma industry has failed to leverage.