MADISON, Wis. (September 18, 2009) — There just never seems to be enough time at the semi-annual Onsemble conferences. With a whirlwind of activity, the eighth face-to-face gathering of the OnCore community was no exception for the 117 people who attended.

Member and guest contributions are critical to the success of all Onsemble conferences. For this event, representatives from 16 cancer centers sat on the Program Committee, which began working in March to plan the agenda. At the conference, presentations were delivered by over 22 member and special-guest speakers. Slide presentations, videos and other materials from the conference are now available for download from the Onsemble.net website.

The theme of this conference was, “Improving Research Efficiencies through Collaboration.” And, in alignment with this theme, some new faces were seen at this event. For the first time, representatives from the pharmaceutical industry were invited to join the conversation. In addition to the 24 research organizations and cancer centers represented at the two-and-a-half day event, attendees also included people from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), Merck, Eli Lilly, the Association of American Cancer Institutes, and PercipEnz.

For the fifth consecutive conference, a pre-conference workshop was held, on the first morning, for members of clinical trials office leadership teams. As in the past, this workshop focused on developing measurements, or “metrics,” for the purpose of understanding and thereby improving clinical research operations. There was also a roundtable discussion to explore issues around patient accrual. Special guests Dan Davis, from Eli Lilly, and Linda Parreco, from NCI, brought their perspectives to the discussion. An article about this workshop appeared in the Summer 2009 edition of the Onsemble Notes newsletter.

There were two other workshops that morning. One was for the OnCore Developer & Adopter Network (ODEAN). In this workshop, attendees explored the OnCore Software Development Toolkit, custom reporting, and an integration case study. The third workshop, designed for people who are new to OnCore or are considering implementing new functionality, provided an introduction to the Onsemble community as well as demonstrations of specific OnCore functionality.

The afternoon of that first day was kicked-off by the keynote address by Dr. Eliav Barr, Vice President of Oncology Clinical at Merck Research Laboratories. According to Dr. Barr, Oncology drug development often has the longest timelines and lowest probability of success compared with other therapeutic areas. Dr. Barr discussed some of the new approaches to reduce inefficiencies that are being piloted.

Continuing the “efficiency through collaboration” theme throughout the afternoon were panel discussions on inter-institutional data sharing and on harmonizing clinical trial portfolios with patient populations.

On the morning of the second day, Srini Kalluri, PercipEnz president and CEO, took the opportunity to update the community on happenings at the company, trends in OnCore utilization throughout the community, and activity among the special interest groups and collaborative initiatives. Then, Tony O’Hare, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer at PercipEnz, provided an update on the evolution of OnCore, both the current version as well as the development plan for the next year. Then, he unveiled the newest product in the OnCore portfolio, the OnCore system for Unified Registries Management (OnCore-URM). Next month, this system will be made available to the five centers that have been participating in the collaborative initiative for this project.

Representatives from several cancer centers shared their success stories on Thursday afternoon. Topics included OnCore adoption strategies, auditing and monitoring of clinical trials, managing affiliates and multi-site trials, and cancer center organizational structure. A poster session on the organizational structure of seven participating cancer centers was held during an extended break midway through the afternoon. The afternoon was capped-off by an appearance by special guest, John Speakman, from NCI, who spoke at length with the group about the NCI’s new Clinical Trials Reporting Program (CTRP).

The final morning of the conference was devoted to concurrent breakout sessions. With ample time for open discussion, these sessions focused on issues in specific operational areas: (1) Regulatory Management, (2) EDC & Data Management, and (3) Clinical Research Financials Management.

Onsemble conferences provide important networking and educational opportunities for those concerned with excellence in clinical research operations. Starting as a consortium of cancer centers that use OnCore® software to manage their clinical research operations, the community now boasts almost 800 members.

As the OnCore community has grown, so have the conferences. The first conference, held in February, 2006, was a two-day event focused largely on OnCore functionality. Since then, the conference has grown to almost three days to accommodate an expanded agenda.

Planning has already begun on the 2010 Spring Conference which will be co-hosted by the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center in Chapel Hill for the second time. The venue will be the same as in 2008, for the event, which will be held February 10^th through the 12^th at the Rizzo Center on the UNC campus.