infoTECH Feature

January 05, 2011

Growth in Clinical Trials Project Eyed by OpenClinica

OpenClinica announced that its open source clinical trials software project has experienced tremendous success in 2010 in terms of number of users and clinical trial subjects. According to Cal Collins, CEO of OpenClinica and Akaza Research, the organization is expecting to continue this increased momentum through 2011.

Web-based electronic data capture (EDC) and clinical data management (CDM) use the world’s most popular open source clinical trials software, OpenClinica. The OpenClinica community across the world comprises of nearly 12,000 users and developers.

In a release, Collins said, “The open source model ensures participation by our ever-changing community of researchers and subjects. In this day and age when people routinely gather online through sites like Facebook (News - Alert) we have demonstrated that an open community can coalesce around electronic data capture and clinical data management and engage at a remarkable level. We believe this helps make OpenClinica more useful to more people.”

Geographic boundaries are spanned by OpenClinica’s community. North America has approximately 33 percent of OpenClinica users. While Europe has 30 percent of OpenClinica users, Asia has 14 percent of the users. Nine percent of users are located in Africa while both South America and Australia have 7 percent of the users.

The Enterprise Edition of the software is commercially supported by Akaza Research. The industry is also attracted to this software apart from OpenClinica’s open source model. As compared to alternative proprietary technologies, enhanced freedom and flexibility are provided by OpenClinica at a dramatically lower cost of ownership. This is possible due to OpenClinica’s two-pronged approach to EDC and CDM.

Collins added that over time, the composition of the OpenClinica community has been changing. The number of OpenClinica users representing commercial clinical trials has increased. According to Collins, 55 percent of the OpenClinica community members identify themselves as working in industry. The remainder identifies themselves as working in academic or government settings.

In a release, Collins said, “A key component to OpenClinica’s growth is the increasing proportion of users representing pharmaceutical, biotech, device and other companies. In 2010, we saw a 975 percent increase in OpenClinica-powered trials used in regulatory submissions and in 2011 we expect to see significant continued growth in this area.”


Calvin Azuri is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Calvin’s articles, please visit his columnist page.
FOLLOW US

Subscribe to InfoTECH Spotlight eNews

InfoTECH Spotlight eNews delivers the latest news impacting technology in the IT industry each week. Sign up to receive FREE breaking news today!
FREE eNewsletter

infoTECH Whitepapers