CDISC Board of Directors Elects New Board Members to Strengthen Global Leadership Base.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Dr. David Hardison, Chairman of the Board of CDISC (the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium), is pleased to announce a number of changes to the CDISC Board of Directors which will strengthen the global leadership base of the CDISC organization.

In January, CDISC will add 3 new members to the CDISC Board of Directors: Tim M. Jaeger, Isabelle de Zegher, and Sue Dubman. Paula Stafford was re-elected for a new Board term and Frank Rockhold was elected to be the new CDISC Chair-elect.

Two of the new Board members are located in the European Union, Tim M. Jaeger, M.D., Ph.D, MBA, and Isabelle de Zegher, M.D., Ms.Sc. Dr. Jaeger represents Roche Diagnostics as Head of Medical and Scientific Affairs. Dr. Jaeger is a pioneer and long time proponent for the use of data standards to improve medical research capabilities through his work in building a standards-based technology infrastructure for an EU project to develop Networks of Competence throughout Europe. He brings to the CDISC Board of Directors a sound understanding of the European clinical trial and regulatory landscape with a thorough understanding of the growing field of diagnostics including the integration of diagnostic and therapeutic trial data sets. Dr. Jaeger is also the current Chairman of the European CDISC Coordinating Committee (E3C).

Dr. de Zegher represents Novartis Pharma as Chief Data Officer for Development. She brings to the CDISC Board a wealth of expertise in computer science applications in both health care and pharmaceutical industry and is spearheading initiatives in health information technology within the pharmaceutical industry. Not only does she contribute insights into the complex and heterogeneous European life science market, but she is knowledgeable in the area of standards and their contributions to system interoperability.

The third new CDISC board member is Sue Dubman. Ms. Dubman is currently Vice President, Information Technology (IT) and Informatics at Theravance, Inc., and has over 15 years experience in life sciences and health care. Prior to Theravance, Dubman was Director of Biomedical Informatics Applications at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). In that role she helped architect and lead several key informatics programs as part of the cancer Bioinformatics Grid (caBIG(TM)) initiative that are widely recognized for their potential to change the way research is done, drugs are developed and how patients and providers interact with the health care enterprise. Ms. Dubman's experience with the many academic, government and industry stakeholders in the medical research arena and her familiarity with running complex informatics programs will be of great support to CDISC in its continued growth and development.

Paula Stafford, MPH, who had been serving a partial term to replace a departing board member, has now been elected to a full board term. Ms. Stafford is the Executive Vice President of Global Data Management at Quintiles. She is the leader of the Board's Financial Oversight Committee.

Dr. Frank Rockhold, Senior Vice President, Drug Development Sciences for GlaxoSmithKline will take the role of CDISC Chair-elect in January for a 2-year term, after which he will become Board Chair. Dr. Rockhold has been the Chair of the CDISC Board Strategy Committee for the past two years and has also added his insights and contributions to the Governance Committee. Dr. Ed Helton, the current CDISC Chair-elect remarked, "Frank has excellent managerial skills and talents; he has a great appreciation of the value that standard data will bring to public health and the pharmaceutical industry. We get captured by the idea of standard data for submission, but Frank is always quick to point out to us that there are other great benefits to having standard data in healthcare -- not all data are used for submissions -- but having standard data for the remaining research data are also very useful, and we should not lose sight of that."

Dr. Hardison, current Chair of the CDISC Board, stated, "CDISC is very fortunate to have such an esteemed Board of Directors. Each Director on the Board has unique talents that will direct the mission of CDISC to fruition."

CDISC would like thank the departing board members, Kenneth Getz, President of CISCRP and Research Fellow, Tufts, Dr. Charles Jaffe, CEO of HL7 and Dr. Steve Ruberg, Research Fellow at Eli Lilly and Company, for their unique contributions, leadership and vision over the duration of their recent terms on the CDISC Board of Directors. Dr. Rebecca Kush, CDISC CEO and President, adds, "The contributions of these Directors on the CDISC Board have been vital to the continued growth and progress of CDISC and are very much appreciated. We trust that you will continue to be involved with CDISC in other capacities going forward."

ABOUT CDISC

CDISC is a global, open, multidisciplinary, non-profit organization that has established standards to support the acquisition, exchange, submission and archive of clinical research data and metadata. The CDISC mission is to develop and support global, platform-independent data standards that enable information system interoperability to improve medical research and related areas of healthcare. CDISC standards are vendor-neutral, platform-independent and freely available via the CDISC website.

CDISC is made possible through the generous support of its members, sponsors, and volunteer participants. These include academia, biopharmaceutical companies, device and diagnostics companies, technology and service providers and anyone interested in streamlining biopharmaceutical product development and improving clinical data quality and healthcare.

Additional information on CDISC can be found on the CDISC website at www.cdisc.org.