J&J Sets Drug Data Free In ‘YODA’ Collaboration With Yale

Drew Armstrong | Bloomberg | January 31, 2014

(Corrects story published Jan. 30 to remove reference in first paragraph to J&J being first to grant access to trial data; corrects 10th paragraph to remove incorrect reference to Justice Department.)

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) will give academics access to data on clinical trials, a move that may prompt more companies to do the same.

The collaboration with Yale University’s Open Data Access Project, or YODA, gives the school power to release years of J&J drug findings to outside researchers. Harlan Krumholz, the Yale researcher leading the project, said it will open up a world of information about how drugs work, and their risks and benefits.

While the U.S. has required the registration of clinical trials since 1997, drugmakers still have wide latitude on deciding what data from those tests they will disclose to the public. That created an opportunity to hide failures and lackluster results that advocacy groups said may have been useful to ensuring patient safety.