The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 277 No 7429 p658
2 December 2006

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ABPI sees clinical trial opportunity in CfH records

Electronic patient records could be used to help recruit clinical trial volunteers, according to Richard Barker, director general of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.

At a briefing last month, Dr Barker said: “If you could wire together 48 million people’s medical records on an anonymised basis and select people [to invite to participate in] clinical trials automatically and survey their use of medicines automatically, we would be the clinical research Mecca of the world.”

Dr Barker also spoke of the need to increase preclinical research and development skills in the UK.

“While the number of people we are training in different medical specialties is going up … the one discipline that’s gone down is clinical pharmacology.” he said.