J&J puts trial data in independent hands | Chemistry World

"In a first-of-its-kind deal, Pharmaceutical firm Johnson & Johnson (J&J) is making all of its drug trial data available via Yale University, US. The Yale Open Data Access (YODA) project will independently review requests for access to the data from J&J’s pharmaceutical subsidiary, Janssen Research and Development. Harlan Krumholz, principal investigator on the YODA project and a long-time campaigner for better access to trial records, calls the move ‘transformative’. ‘The scope of it and also the willingness to transfer authority, providing access to an independent academic partner, I think is unprecedented,’ Krumholz tells Chemistry World. Pressure has been growing on the pharmaceutical industry over its vast archive of hidden knowledge, with half of all clinical trials historically not published, and some not even registered. That missing data means that healthcare decisions are not completely informed, and that trials may be repeated unnecessarily. As this failure has come under increasing scrutiny, focussed by researchers like Krumholz and campaigns like AllTrials, some drug companies have seemingly responded remarkably quickly ..."