NIH will hold two-day scientific meeting on May 31 and June 1, 2006 will present findings from the NIH-sponsored Inventory and Evaluation of Clinical Research Networks (IECRN) and will address ways to improve the infrastructure of clinical research networks and make recommendations for increasing their efficiency and effectiveness.

Attendees will have opportunities to provide input into findings and best practice models used by the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research in its ongoing discussion of re-engineering the clinical research enterprise.

The venue will be at DoubleTree Rockville Hotel, 1750 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852

The target audience includes principal investigators, epidemiologists, behavioral scientists, clinical study coordinators, pharmacists, biostatisticians, clinicians, data managers, and bioinformatics and information technologists.

Speakers are Elias A. Zerhouni, director, National Institutes of Health; Kelly Cronin, director, office of programmes and coordination, office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, US Department of Health and Human Services

The forum is open to the public and registration is free. Due to room capacity, registration will be limited to the first 500 participants. The plenary sessions will be simultaneously webcast.


The forum will provide a venue for attendees to critically review and discuss the IECRN survey and best practice assessments. Goals of the National Leadership Forum include: Engaging opinion leaders from the clinical research network community in building a common framework for discourse and dialogue on the NIH Roadmap initiative, Supporting cross-network exchange in the clinical research network community, Providing a springboard to ongoing dissemination of information and practice models to the clinical research network community.

For registration and more information, please visit the IECRN National Leadership Forum Web site at http://www.clinicalresearchnetworks.org/forum.asp