A group of health systems, hospitals, and universities has come together to form a clinical trial consortium in Philadelphia. Dr. David Whellan, the COO of Partners in Innovation, Education, and Research or PIER, said in a phone interview that one of the value propositions for the six founding members is leveraging the consortium’s pooled resources for grant proposals. PIER also seems designed to make its members more competitive with the University of Pennsylvania, which ranks as one of the top institutions by NIH grant recipients in the country.
PIER members include Atlantic Health System, Drexel University, Einstein Healthcare Network, Geisinger Health, including AtlantiCare, Main Line Health, and Thomas Jefferson University.
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Although similar attempts have been made in the past in the early 2000s, the effort failed to get further than the discussion stage.
Whellan, who also serves as Senior Associate Provost for Clinical Research at Jefferson, said it was in the early stages of talks with clinical trial sponsors such as Johnson & Johnson.
“It really needed to be a true partnership of equals,” Whellan said. “One thing we have worked on was developing a consortium where no one member would have a controlling interest. And it had really had to be an independent entity…Each of the groups in the consortium has developed expertise on their own for robust research.”
He added: “It’s not meant to be exclusive and the intent is to have other organizations join the consortium…”
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The goal of having a broad network of physician-researchers is to speed up the clinical trial process and deliver effective therapies to patients sooner, Whellan noted in a news release.
One of the discussions for the consortium has been around novel approaches to clinical research data collection, implementation and collaborating with these companies evaluate these companies and provide proof of concept.
News of the consortium was greeted positively by startups that have developed tools to make clinical trials more efficient. One was VitalTrax CEO and founder Zikria Syed.
“The founding of PIER Consortium is a big step in the right direction. One of the fundamental challenges in clinical research is access to patients — more than 50 percent of clinical trials are delayed due to lack of patient enrollment,” Syed said. “By coming together, these institutions are giving patients access to a greater number of trials. Conversely, it makes it easier for us to promote their trials on our PatientWing platform and find patients as these institutions collectively run almost 2,000 clinical trials.”
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