ECRIN – Supporting clinical trials across borders

The European Clinical Research Infrastructure Network (ECRIN-ERIC) is a European Research Infrastructure facilitating multinational clinical research, through the provision of advice and services for the set-up and management of investigator or SME led clinical studies in Europe.
ECRIN – Supporting clinical trials across borders
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What is ECRIN?

ECRIN is a not-for-profit, European research infrastructure that supports researchers to set up and conduct multinational clinical trials in Europe. We do this by linking with our national European Correspondents – who are hosted by our national networks of clinical trial units – and through our services and tools for the set-up and conduct of multinational clinical trials.

ECRIN’s head office is based in Paris (France), and we work primarily with our 12 member countries in Europe, as well as other European and international partners in some projects. Our network consists of over 100 clinical trial units, we have a portfolio of over 70 clinical trials and we participate in more than 40 collaborative infrastructure development projects. ECRIN is ISO 9001:2015 certified for its core services.

What does ECRIN do?

Although many clinical trials are conducted at a national level, it is sometimes necessary to go across borders. We help researchers with the set-up and management of their clinical trial in a multinational setting. We facilitate the implementation of the clinical trial in other countries at the various stages of the trial lifecycle, from trial planning and design to operational trial management services. This means that we collaborate on the protocol development, we conduct risk assessments, and we support the researchers and sponsors with regulatory and ethical requirements, monitoring, adverse event reporting and more.

Multinational clinical trials provide greater access to patients, facilities and medical expertise; enhance methodological standards; enable the sharing of costs, tools and procedures; increase the potential for broad implementation of research outcomes; and prevent duplication and waste of research.

Beyond the clinical trial operations services, ECRIN also offers a Data Centre Certification Program to its member countries. The goal is to enhance high-quality data management services in non-commercial clinical trials and to contribute to the harmonisation of European practice in data management.

How can ECRIN help me?

Clinical trial services and support

  • Trial preparation: Funding, support to facilitate site mapping and participant recruitment, selection of clinical trial units, regulatory and ethical requirements, insurance requirements, budgeting.
  • Protocol review: Scientific and methodological evaluation, logistical assessment.
  • Trial management: Submissions to competent authorities and ethics committees, insurance support, monitoring, adverse event reporting, data management, recommendations for health product and biosample management.

Data Centre Certification Program

  • Data Centre Certification: Developed to audit European, non-commercial data centres using ECRIN IT/DM standards, to confirm their ability to provide compliant, effective, and efficient data management services for controlled clinical trials.

Tools

ECRIN develops, contributes to, and maintains freely accessible tools that facilitate research and organisation of clinical trials in Europe including:

  • Clinical research meta data repository: The online tool to find documents and data linked to a clinical research study.
  • Rare disease clinical trials toolbox: A practical and guided toolbox to help clinical trialists and R&D managers understand the regulations and requirements for conducting trials with a focus on paediatrics and rare diseases.
  • Adaptive Platform Trial toolbox: It collects the accumulated knowledge, experience, and resources into a practical and guided toolbox to facilitate planning and conduct of future adaptive platform trials in any therapeutic area.

And many more on the Tools page of the ECRIN website.

More information

For any further information on ECRIN, our services and tools, our network, and our recent projects, please visit the ECRIN website at www.ecrin.org. To stay updated you can also follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

ECRIN logo


Photo by ECRIN

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