As a group that represents academia, private industry, research, government, and other health institutions, our collective response to COVID-19 demonstrates the need for a unified, cloud-based technology platform.

Recently I had the pleasure of presenting a webinar alongside my colleague, Michael McGloughlin, sales director of emerging biopharma for Oracle Health Sciences, on the "Future of Clinical Trials: Reimagining the Way Technology and Data Support Clinical Research".

We conducted a quick poll and learned that the majority of webinar attendees, 63%, are managing up to five different technology platforms in support of clinical trials. I suspect that if we took into account the number of different vendors we work with that provide these technology types – such as electronic data capture (EDC) systems, electronic case report forms (eCRFs), interactive response technology (IRT), safety database providers, etc. – that number would grow considerably.