A standard-driven approach for electronic submission to pharmaceutical regulatory authorities

Ching Heng Lin, Hsin I. Chou, Ueng Cheng Yang*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

Objective: Using standards is not only useful for data interchange during the process of a clinical trial, but also useful for analyzing data in a review process. Any step, which speeds up approval of new drugs, may benefit patients. As a result, adopting standards for regulatory submission becomes mandatory in some countries. However, preparing standard-compliant documents, such as annotated case report form (aCRF), needs a great deal of knowledge and experience. The process is complex and labor-intensive. Therefore, there is a need to use information technology to facilitate this process. Materials and methods: Instead of standardizing data after the completion of a clinical trial, this study proposed a standard-driven approach. This approach was achieved by implementing a computer-assisted “standard-driven pipeline (SDP)” in an existing clinical data management system. SDP used CDISC standards to drive all processes of a clinical trial, such as the design, data acquisition, tabulation, etc. Results: A completed phase I/II trial was used to prove the concept and to evaluate the effects of this approach. By using the CDISC-compliant question library, aCRFs were generated automatically when the eCRFs were completed. For comparison purpose, the data collection process was simulated and the collected data was transformed by the SDP. This new approach reduced the missing data fields from sixty-two to eight and the controlled term mismatch field reduced from eight to zero during data tabulation. Conclusion: This standard-driven approach accelerated CRF annotation and assured data tabulation integrity. The benefits of this approach include an improvement in the use of standards during the clinical trial and a reduction in missing and unexpected data during tabulation. The standard-driven approach is an advanced design idea that can be used for future clinical information system development.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)60-70
Number of pages11
JournalJournal of Biomedical Informatics
Volume79
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2018

Keywords

  • Annotated case report form
  • CDISC standards
  • Electronic regulatory submission

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