The Alliance for Clinical Research Excellence and Safety (ACRES),  a non-profit multi-sector alliance working in the public interest, has launched ACRES BlueCloud, the first phase implementation of a shared multi-user interface to allow sponsors, CROs, regulatory agencies, funding agencies and IRBs to access millions of verifiable professional experience and training credentials, enabling long-sought sharing and mutual recognition of those credentials by multiple stakeholders.

The technology also provides a global integration platform through which stakeholders can seamlessly access and deploy already established technology solutions and collaborative data warehouses to support a global system for high-performance accountable research.  

Made possible by a multi-million dollar technologies and services pledge from ACRES’ strategic ally HealthCarePoint, a Texas-based healthcare and clinical research networking-technology corporation, ACRES BlueCloud provides much needed and desired capabilities for effortlessly interconnecting parties across the global clinical research ecosystem.  

“We are happy to provide ACRES BlueCloud as part of our common mission to improve efficiency, quality and transparency across this endeavour, benefiting patients and care givers worldwide”, stated Al O. Pacino, president of HCP, “By donating this technology, we can very substantially help ACRES realize its goal to build a collaborative global system for clinical research.” Pacino is also ACRES’ Vice President for Collaborative Network Development.  

HealthCarePoint is among several technology companies and standards organizations comprising ACRES’ global Technology Consortium, working to integrate critical technology solutions from multiple providers into a comprehensive shared, universal interface supporting collaboration and interoperability among key stakeholders across the clinical research enterprise.

“There is much talk these days about portals and technology solutions to promote safety, quality, efficiency and collaboration in clinical research”, noted Greg Koski, ACRES president and CEO. “Actually, many solutions are already available and proven, but we need a system enabling them to work together. Rather than costly building from scratch, ACRES is leveraging existing technologies through a shared integration platform. ACRES BlueCloud is a major first-step in this direction and we are very grateful to HealthCarePoint for making it possible.”

Rollout of the ACRES BlueCloud platform will begin immediately by providing the technology free of charge to clinical research sites worldwide, thereby extending and leveraging the existing global network of nearly three-quarter million current BlueCloud users from some 60,000 healthcare and research-related organizations worldwide.  The network’s single sign-on interface will allow sites to connect with sponsors, CROs, ethics committees (IRBs) and other stakeholders through a unified platform, sharing critical professional and operational information, such as GCP training certifications and other professional credentials. As other provider technologies integrate with the shared platform through application programming interfaces, commonly known as APIs, additional functionality will be added.  

Daniel O’Connor, president and chief business officer of California-based InnovoCommerce, a leading provider of secure cloud-based collaboration solutions for the life science industry, enthusiastically greeted the announcement. “This is a milestone for the drug development enterprise. Global availability of a common platform allowing all players to connect and share information, which also enables access to and interoperability of technologies from multiple providers and users, is huge.  ACRES vision of a shared integrating platform, as opposed to a single proprietary platform, is the foundation for a much needed global system, one that is taking shape before our eyes - this is real progress, and all of us at InnovoCommerce are proud to be part of it.”