CRDSA’s assets and resources can be found in this section of our site.
Resources designated “Member Access” are only available through CRDSA’s member portal and available to all employees of member organizations. If you are a non-member and would like to request a specific asset please send an email to info@crdsalliance.org.
Innovative Trial Design
FDA Draft External Controls Guidance
Date: Updated August 22, 2023
Innovative trial designs that make use of the totality of available evidence can reduce the burden on patients and meaningfully improve the drug development process. In February 2023, the FDA released for public comment: “Considerations for the Design and Conduct of Externally Controlled Trials for Drug and Biological Products” (Docket FDA-2022-D-2983).
The draft guidance received over 200 responses from industry sponsors, patient advocacy organizations, academic research institutions, non-profit consortia, and patients. In July, CRDSA convened a roundtable panel of experts to discuss issues raised by commenting organizations and explore ways to ensure the expanded use of alternative control trial designs in regulatory submissions. The August 2023 FDA Draft External Controls Guidance: Situation Analysis and Recommendations report summarizes the roundtable discussion, key regulatory challenges, and recommendations.
Secondary Use Standards
“Establishing a Basis for Secondary Use Standards in Clinical Trials”
Date: March 8, 2023
This paper, published in Applied Clinical Trials, reports on CRDSA’s 2022 survey of biopharma and academic researchers. The paper discusses how common standards can accelerate the reuse of trial data, benefiting both data contributors and the research community. The results of the survey will inform the development of data contribution best practices.
Technology and Innovation
Data Sharing Technology Assessment Framework
Date: November 14, 2022
CRDSA’s Technology and Innovation Work Group has developed a data-sharing technology assessment framework to support stakeholders in their evaluation of technologies and approaches that advance their data-sharing initiatives, whether they are interested in technologies for external data sharing or support an organization’s internal data reuse. The framework is designed to assist stakeholders in determining the requirements and use cases important to their organization. The resulting assessment scores can be used to compare how well different technology approaches or project scopes meet organizational objectives.
Data Protection
Whitepaper: A Review of BioPharma Sponsor Data Sharing Policies and Protection Methodologies
Date: September 12, 2022
This white paper examines clinical trial data contribution policies and the data protection methodologies applied to protect patient privacy. Information published by 29 biopharma sponsors was collected across three data-sharing platforms, collated by sponsor size. Results showed that large sponsor contribution policies can provide helpful benchmarks for medium and smaller sponsors. However, understanding the data protection methodologies applied by data contributors required the development of an interpretation rubric. This lack of clarity in the critical data transformation area can present a significant barrier for researchers and hinder their understanding of which studies will be useful in their research. Findings of the paper include highlighting an opportunity for sponsors to both aid researchers and reduce unnecessary data preparation work by sharing information with more consistency and clarity.
General Resources
Article: Clinical data consortium seeks to establish best practices for supplemental controls
Date: February 15, 2023
Regulatory Focus, a publication of Regulatory Affairs Professional Society (RAPS), interviews CRDSA CEO Aaron Mann and COTA Healthcare’s Chief Medical Officer C.K. Wang, MD, on CRDSA’s demonstration project that seeks to establish best practices around the use of clinical trial and real-world data (RWD) in building supplemental control arms.
Podcast: Unlocking the True Potential of Clinical Research Data
Date: September 23, 2022
In Teckro’s podcast episode “Unlocking the True Potential of Clinical Research Data,” Aaron Mann discusses the importance of unleashing the power of clinical research data. Aaron explains why he’s optimistic about the potential of data sharing among sponsors to revolutionize trial design and improve patient recruitment – and why he believes patients really want their data to be shared.
Podcast: Mind Your Data: The First Rule of Predictive Analytics in Clinical Research
Date: June 17, 2022
In this episode of the IEEE Standard Association’s “Re-Think Health” Podcast Series, Aaron Mann and Maria Polombini discuss how open data sharing is paving the way to access more quality, real-world and inclusive data to enable predictivity analytics to be more accurate, resourceful, and utilitarian in the world of clinical research.
Article: Realizing the Promise of Data Sharing: A Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration
Date: January 3, 2022
This article in Clinical Leader discusses the challenges faced across the clinical data sharing ecosystem and how CRDSA’s Work Streams are addressing these challenges.