NextUp: How Clinlogix Is Making Clinical Trials Faster and More Efficient
Using innovative tools like blockchain, this local clinical research service organization is helping companies bring new therapies to patients sooner.
Clinlogix founder and CEO, JeanMarie Markham. / Courtesy
“NextUp” is a weekly NextHealth PHL feature that highlights the local leaders, organizations and research shaping the Greater Philadelphia region’s life sciences ecosystem. Email qmuse@phillymag.com with pitches for NextUp.
Who: JeanMarie Markham spent years as a registered nurse pondering ways to improve patients’ health and quality of life, but it was a personal experience that led her to launch her own business. Markham had the unfortunate experience of watching her grandmother suffer from congestive heart failure while the only medication that offered any relief was held up in a clinical trial. Markham wanted to make sure no patient had to have the experience her grandmother had. In 1999, she founded Clinlogix to help companies bring new therapies and therapeutics to market as safely and quickly as possible.
What: Clinlogix is a clinical research service organization (CRO) that helps companies conduct complex, next-generation research to find success in health and medicine. Clinlogix helps companies develop new medical devices, pharmaceutical products, and emergent technologies by providing project management and expertise at every step from pre-clinical development to post-market surveillance.
Since the company’s inception in the basement of Markham’s Oreland, Pennsylvania home, she has grown Clinlogix into a multinational company with headquarters at Spring House Innovation Park and regional offices located in Japan, Germany and Colombia.
Over the last 20 years, Clinlogix has supported more than 500 trials across 3,500 clinical sites worldwide and continues to help companies meet their goals as they face complex clinical development and regulatory pathways.
When: In July 2019, Clinlogix, became the first company to implement a blockchain platform in clinical trials due to a partnership with engineering services firm ALTEN Calsoft Labs. In clinical trials, blockchain can be used as a tool to address common challenges researchers face when conducting clinical trials, including sharing and reproducing data, ensuring patient safety and privacy, and improving the quality of data.
“I’m very excited to be one of the first, if not the first, CRO who is moving ahead with the rapid development and deployment of a blockchain-based platform which will become an industry standard,” Markham said.
“Clinlogix has always embraced new technologies that improve patient outcomes, safety, and health along with helping our sponsors to get new treatments to market rapidly, efficiently and cost-effectively. We are a decidedly different CRO and the new blockchain technology complements our ‘Innovation Pathway’ culture for all of our people and our customers.”
Why: There are currently more than 322,000 trials underway in 209 countries, according to ClinicalTrials.gov; roughly 100,000 of them are being held in the United States. As companies continue to launch more complex studies, the demand for clinical and regulatory expertise of CROs like Clinlogix will grow.
What It Means: For many patients, the only therapies that might serve as a cure are stalled in lengthy clinical trials that can take anywhere from ten to 15 years or more to complete. Clinlogix’s work to improve clinical trial processes could help researchers make their trials more efficient, thereby bringing new treatments to patients sooner.
