Smart Program Design Through a Common Information Model

Although much information is already available publically from information-sharing initiatives such as ClinicalTrials.gov, information about clinical programs is unstructured, inconsistent, and incomplete. Clinical research within bioscience companies, health care, academia, and governmental agencies could benefit from easier access to best practices, historical information, and improved information sharing. Facilitating information sharing requires a standardized information model. Information standards today focus on individual clinical trials and the representation of clinical trial data. Although work is ongoing to expand standards to cover the protocol, these are insufficient to capture the objectives, rationale, and design thinking behind clinical programs. An information model is proposed to cover the rationalization and decision-making aspects of designing a clinical program and its associated trials. This paper is the output of a newly formed multicompany working group that examines the merits of a clinical program-level information standard. An example information model is presented to explain the concept.