Will an Open-Access Clinical Trials Database Improve Drug Development?

New Jersey-based business intelligence firm OZMOSI has launched a free-to-use, open-access database of clinical trial data collected from studies around the world. The company claims that their publicly-available, searchable database is the largest of its kind, housing data collected from over 280,000 clinical trials across more than 3,700 disease areas.

“There is an opportunity to fundamentally transform how the healthcare industry works,” said Beau Bush, founder of OZMOSI. “Setting profits aside and giving GlobalClinicalTrialsData.com to the world is the right thing to do because we believe that free data should be free for everyone. By offering real-time information, ten times more downloadable data than any other trial registry, and by removing download restrictions, GlobalClinicalTrialsData.com will provide greater industry transparency and incredible efficiencies, which will empower and encourage the industry to increase cooperation and collaboration on drug research like never before.”

The company cites rising drug development costs and the high failure rate in clinical candidates as drivers behind their decision to launch their global database. By providing the pharmaceutical industry with access to cleaned and processed clinical data, downloadable in a user-friendly format, OZMOSI hopes their database will be the “go-to resource for the pharmaceutical industry.”

Currently, OZMOSI consolidates clinical data from government-maintained registries of trials from the US, Europe and Japan. By the end of 2017, the company plans to add data from clinical trials conducted in China, Australia and New Zealand.

While all clinical trials being conducted in the US – or those whose drugs or medical devices are designed to be used by patients in America – are legally required to be registered on the NIH-maintained ClinicalTrials.gov. Despite this requirement, registration on the site has been notoriously low, with a 2016 study finding that only 29 percent of trials published their results on the site within 2 years of the study completion date.

OZMOSI reports that by next year, the database will contain 99 percent of all clinical trials from around the world, in a real-time format. Unless compliance with clinical trial registration is on the rise, it’s likely that the database will contain some gaps in terms of undisclosed studies currently underway.

In spite of this issue, OZMOSI’s database will likely provide a valuable resource for pharmaceutical developers, physicians and patients alike.