New clinical research consortium to tackle pandemic threats

"A group of health organizations today launched a new international consortium to better prepare the clinical research community to respond to the next pandemic or other emerging health threat....Known as the International Severe Acute Respiratory Infection Consortium (ISARIC), the collaboration is made up of more than 20 hospital-based clinical research networks, with the goal of putting in place open-access protocols, data-sharing processes, and ethical frameworks to streamline the response to rapidly emerging diseases such as SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and the 2009 H1N1 pandemic....Members of ISARIC will develop and implement standardized protocols, metrics, and data-sharing processes and use preapproved, open-access methods that can be rapidly triggered in the event of a novel threat, a measure designed to allow researchers from high- and low-income countries to work together and share data, according to the press release. Networks that have already signed on are located on all six continents...."