Usha Sharma – Mumbai
Society for Clinical Data Management (SCDM) recently concluded the SCDM Asia Conference in Mumbai. The two-day conference from May 31 to June 1, 2013, was the first one to be held in India and outside the US. More than 150 participants from seven countries took part in the conference and were represented by 50 companies. The theme of the conference was ‘The Changing Landscape of Clinical Data Management (CDM): Transformational Trends and Technological Innovations.’
Jennifer Duggan, Director, Clinical Data Management, St Jude Medical inaugurated the conference and delivered the welcome speech. Paula Brown Stafford, President, Clinical Development, Quintiles and VK Raman, Head of Global, BPO Services, TCS, gave the key note address.
The conference focused upon ‘The Changing Landscape of CDM: Transformational Trends and Technological Innovations’, and represented the who’s who of the CDM industry in India, as well as countries such as China, Japan, Australia, the US, the UK and Sweden as well. Risk-based monitoring, project management methodologies, Transcelerate, CPI, CTTI, Lean Six Sigma in CDM, outsourcing, Big Data, semantic interoperability and personalised medicine, were some of the highlights of the meeting.
In her keynote speech, Stafford presented the trends in the information management from 2010-2015, with real world therapeutic evaluation. She highlighted the three data-driven innovations like risk assessment, data surveillance and dynamic monitoring with real time challenges.
Raman stressed on the changing landscape of CDM transformation trends and technological innovations. He pointed out the trend of decreasing approvals on the global front with the soaring costs. He also shared his views on the importance of social media and suggested an effective partnership, not only between pharma companies but also with the regulators.
On the second day, Baljit Samra, Country Manager, Parexel India delivered the keynote at the conference. The evolving role of the CDM leader in Asia, retention challenges, the need for competency development and the role that SCDM could play through its professional certification programme, the growing recognition of India as a destination for high quality and communication as a key skill were some of the important take home messages. The conference touched upon important subjects ranging from talent pool in the CDM industry to innovative metrics, advancements in data collection to system integration, risk management and outsourcing challenges.
Some of the prominent names addressing the gathering included Jonathan Andrus, Vice Chair, SCDM and Sr VP, Operations, BioClinica, Conference Co-Chairs Dr Nimita Limaye from TCS and Dr Suresh Bowalekar – Biostatistics, India and Terilynn Koster – Vice President, Global Data Management, inVentiv Health Clinical. The overwhelming response that this conference received and its success has set the ball rolling for SCDM to participate and organise more such conferences outside of the US.
Revealing more details on the success of the event Andrus said, “After the success of SCDM Mumbai conference, we are contemplating conducting more such events in Asia. This was the first time we have conducted the event in India and there are plans to have similar conferences in Bangalore; as well as Singapore.”
He also revealed the key reasons behind conducting the conference in India, “We strongly felt the urge to have an event in India because financially it is not viable to train in the US. I am very happy and as a company we are planning to do a technology partnership for the 2014 event. I strongly feel that research-based companies should come together for a joint partnership which we did not have this year.”
Raman further said, “I believe industry fora like these help professionals update their knowledge, renew their contacts and contribute to the furtherance of the domain. I enjoyed being in the midst of learned colleagues from the bio pharma industry and was happy to share my perspective.”
- Advertisement -
