Are you prepared for CDISC?

Jul 17, 2012 by Clinovo    No Comments    Posted under: CDISC, Trends

CDISC® (Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium) is establishing data standards to speed up data-review and improve clinical data exchange, storage and archival. Today, 60% of FDA submissions are already done in CDISC standards. The FDA is getting more and more involved into CDISC standards, a meaningful signal for the industry. Theresa Mullin, Director of Office of Planning and Informatics within CDER, claimed that “the FDA is committed to using CDISC standards for the foreseeable future”. These data standards are expected to be mandatory by 2016 for every drug submission.

CDISC standards hold the clinical data to a greater level of readability and compliancy in regards to FDA requirements. Carey Smoak, Senior Manager of SAS Programming at Roche Molecular and CDISC Device Team Leader, points out that “a submission without CDISC standards can have a review period twice as long as one under standards”. Indeed, they facilitate the FDA review process since they are known and understood by reviewers.

A 2009 study conducted by Gartner in collaboration with the CDISC organization shows that the overall clinical trial duration is divided by two when using CDISC standards. Thus CDISC standards ultimately speed up time to market.

So if the benefits of using CDISC standards are so obvious, how can we explain that so many sponsor companies are still not adopting them?

Converting legacy data to CDISC standards is expensive

Clinical data standardization is no simple process:  It is time consuming and proves to be tedious. However, a few open source CDISC conversion tools have been launched to address this problem. One successful example is the OpenCDSIC validator software, recognized by the FDA and freely available. CDISC Express, Clinovo’s free SAS-based SDTM mapping tool, has been downloaded 600 times.

In the future, standards can be adopted smoothly if the industry works harder at incorporating them earlier in the process. Indeed, the next challenge is to push CDISC standards upfront in the clinical trial process. CDISC experts agree the best timing to implement CDISC standards is the database built.

CDISC standards are still evolving

Standards are still being built and are in constant evolution. The CDISC organization is still releasing new versions of its clinical standards. Sponsors companies are often scared that if they convert their clinical data to a format, it will be obsolete a year later. Clinical trial experts still state however that sponsor companies should shift to CDISC standards as soon as possible.

Companies often lack the internal expertise

In order to be efficiently used and maintained, Carey Smoak points out that “the wiser choice is to hire people with expertise on CDISC standards”. Companies should educate themselves on this topic and exclusively hire experts from CDISC Registered Solutions Providers organizations.

Ale Gicqueau, CEO at Clinovo

Got anything to say? Go ahead and leave a comment!

CPA Offers | Best Web Hosting Reviews | by Premium WP Themes