In less than two weeks, I’ll be in Philadelphia for CBI’s ClinTech 2013 event at the Loew’s Hotel. For the first day of the event, morning keynotes, an FDA address, and a TechVision panel, moderated by me, precede lunch and an afternoon breakout by operational interest. Four eClinical tracks are broken out on the second day of the event-- CTMS, eTMF, portals and EDC. If you have a moment, take this survey on CTMS which will support that track.

Coincidentally, I’ve been reading over our own eClinical: Directions for 2013 insert that is debuting online soon, covering many trends: technology integration, mobile technology, single sign-on, and more as a need to leverage all the data that is collected in clinical trials. Between this and preparing for the conference, I am immersed in eClinical. Which is good because there are many indications that eClinical and tech adoption is making progress after a couple of quiet years during the economic strain in the industry.

The TechVision panel is already proving interesting based on the expert areas of interest and experience of the members. Those members are: Robin DeMent, Vice President, R&D-IT Medical Development Capabilities for GlaxoSmithKline; Dharma Bhagavathi, Head of Clinical Technology Office, Sanofi Clinical Sciences & Operations
; Kevin Johnson, Business Infrastructures Department, 
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd; and Henry Levy, Managing Director, Accenture Life Sciences Research and Development.

After a briefing we had last week to discuss the top trends in next generation technology, these floated to the top:
· Data integrations – role of standards – is there a need to continually evolve them?
· What is the patient focus?
· Hosted technology vs. SaaS – Is industry ready to accept new models? Is the vendor landscape where they need to be?
· What is a data warehouse? Is there a need for it? Does industry understand what it wants?
· Systems are now siloed – what is the next generation of systems?
· Process excellence/optimization – BPM

Whether or not we discuss those topics at the panel remains to be seen because it will be an audience-driven event. Based on my previous experience at CBI conferences, I expect that audience participation will be high and so will the interaction.

eClinical technology, choices of software and delivery mode, integration, etc., is on-going, so Applied Clinical Trials and CBI will continue to deliver information on these topics all year. Technology truly is the backbone of this industry and you can’t talk about one topic without bringing the supporting technology into it. Look for our eClinical insert online in March and take a peak at CBI’s 10th Forum on Patient Reported Outcomes agenda for May 6 & 7, also in Philadelphia.