An online portal where researchers can request access to anonymized patient-level clinical trial data from five pharmaceutical companies has been launched at www.ClinicalStudyDataRequest.com. Last year GSK was the first company to launch an online system for researchers to request access to trial data. GSK has now been joined by Roche, Boehringer Ingelheim, Sanofi and ViiV Healthcare. The five companies are inviting all other industry, academic and non-profit trial sponsors to join them and include their studies on the portal too.
GSK committed to making information from clinical trials since 2000 available. Sanofi announced yesterday that it will offer access to information only from trials of drugs approved after 1st January 2014. We are pleased to see the launch of the portal and that mounting pressure is bursting the banks of secrecy. But we think Sanofi can do better. Most of the medicines we use today came on the market, and were therefore tested in clinical trials, decades ago. We’re looking forward to congratulating more companies for committing to make information from past trials available this year.