Turnover of GlaxoSmithKline was US$44 billion in 2013 and it annually spends $6.5 billion in R&D. Its sales data is public information while results of R&D had been the best kept secret until October 2012. Two years ago the British pharmaceutical behemoth has stunned the scientific community when it decided to share the detailed data of its clinical trials. No, it was not a cheap marketing stunt, as MIT Technology Review reports:
In May 2013, the company began posting its own data online. Then it invited others to join ClinicalStudyDataRequest.com, where GSK and six other drugmakers have already uploaded data from nearly 900 clinical trials, and more than a dozen research projects are under way.
Trial transparency is appealing thanks to a growing sense that it could make drug development more efficient, saving the industry billions while also getting breakthrough therapies to patients more quickly.
LIRNEasia’s pursuit of using mobile Big Data for development is quite identical to what GSK and its competitors have been voluntarily doing with their own. Besides serving itself, the mobile industry can also offer huge social benefits by sharing its Big Data with the researchers. It has already started in Sri Lanka. Let it also begin in Bangladesh and elsewhere.
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