Medidata Institute Launches

Medidata has announced that it has launched the Medidata Institute. The Institute is working with industry partners to deliver insights that redefine how technology, data and AI can improve and inspire the next generation of medical treatments.

Medidata's decades of technical and industry experience position the company to work with and unite leaders across the life sciences via the Medidata Institute - including researchers, regulatory bodies, patient advocacy groups and other organizations.

“The Medidata Institute was established in support of our company’s mission of powering smarter treatments and healthier people,” said Glen de Vries, co-founder and president, Medidata. “This forum challenges the industry to think in new ways about how technology can fundamentally improve the way we conduct research and deliver treatments to patients in need.”

Medidata has initially partnered with Friends of Cancer Research (Friends) and The Castleman Disease Collaborative Network (CDCN) -- two organizations focused on bringing better treatments to patients through collaboration. Medidata is part of a working group led by Friends comprised of representatives from the FDA, pharmaceutical companies, academia and patient advocacy. The group seeks to address the challenge of randomized control trials and explores the power of external controls, such as synthetic control arms (SCA).

By leveraging advanced analytics and patient-level data from multiple historical clinical trials, Medidata and Friends demonstrated in a non-small cell lung cancer case study that SCAs can mimic the results of a traditional randomized control. Specifically, the overall survival (OS) of the target randomized control was replicated by the SCA. These findings hold promise in identifying ways to reduce the number of patients needed for a randomized control arm.

“The vast amount of data available in the life sciences today offers an opportunity to transform the clinical trial process,” said Mark Stewart, vice president, science policy, Friends of Cancer Research. “Partnering with the Medidata Institute to make these data actionable is a game-changing effort that will enhance the clinical trial experience for patients and propel next gen therapies.”

Medidata has also partnered with CDCN to advance personalized medicine for patients with this life-threatening, rare disorder.

To learn more about the Medidata Institute, click here.