By Clinical Informatics News Staff

July 9, 2018 | CluePoints has entered into a significant enterprise agreement with leading Japanese drug development organization, ONO. The agreement sees ONO utilizing the CluePoints centralized statistical monitoring (CSM) platform, a winner of a 2017 Clinical Informatics News Best Practices award, to drive its RBM strategy over a four-year period and firmly strengthens CluePoints’ established presence in the Asia Pacific market.

Following a successful pilot study in 2017, ONO, who are actively pursuing research and development of drugs for cancer, auto-immune disease and neurological disease, recognized the impressive cost and resource efficiencies that can be achieved by using advanced statistical methodologies to identify the sites and patients where monitoring is most needed.

CluePoints and ONO will now continue to work in close partnership over the next four years to build on the success of the pilot program. Experts from CluePoints in Japan will deliver on-site training and provide ongoing support to the ONO team to ensure the adoption of the RBM approach delivers the best possible results. 

Since the introduction of the ICH E6 (R2) addendum in 2016, the industry has seen an increase in the implementation of a variety of RBM methodologies and technologies, however, the Japanese Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency (PMDA) is yet to release any specific regional guidance on its use. As one of the first companies in its market to embrace an RBM approach, before it is even required by regulators, this partnership demonstrates ONO’s innovative and proactive philosophy and clearly positions the company as an innovator in the region.

Patrick Hughes, Chief Commercial Officer at CluePoints, said in a press release: “The enterprise agreement with ONO represents a significant step forward for CluePoints, and further cements our position as the ‘go-to’ Risk-Based Monitoring (RBM) provider in the Asia Pacific region. It’s an honor for us to work with such a forward-thinking company, who are embracing the global regulatory changes and recognizing the power of RBM before the Japanese PMDA has formally mandated the approach. We’re confident that through our continued collaborative approach, our relationship with ONO will prosper and we are very much looking forward to working with the team over the next four years and beyond.”