Alliance for Clinical Research Excellence and Safety (ACRES) announces new Board of Directors and Global Advisory Board

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 22, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The Alliance for Clinical Research Excellence and Safety today announced its new Board of Directors, as well as appointment of a Global Advisory Board, to guide the non-profit's efforts in building an integrated global system to enhance clinical research and its application to health-care through standards, information technology, and professionalism. 

The Directors are:

• Bill Davenhall - Senior Health Advisor, Health and Human Services at ESRI, the world's leading developer and provider of geographic information systems technology and analytics.
• Jose-Luiz Gomes do Amaral, MD - Professor, Federal University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and immediate Past-President of the World Medical Association, which promotes standards for physicians on a range of ethical issues including clinical research.
• Ranga Krishnan, MD - Dean, Duke-National University of Singapore Graduate School of Medicine, an innovative strategic collaboration between Duke University and the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Professor and Chair, Department of Psychiatry, Duke University School of Medicine.
• Rebecca Kush, PhD - Founder and President, Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC), a global, open, multidisciplinary, non-profit organization that has established standards to support global, platform-independent data standards that enable information system interoperability to improve medical research and related areas of healthcare.
• Kenneth E. MacWilliams - Chief Executive Officer at Woodrow Wilson Associates; former President of Prudential Capital Corporation, formerly the investment banking division of Prudential Financial, a financial services company in the United States.
• Briggs Morrison, MD - Executive Vice President, Global Medicines Development and Chief Medical Officer, AstraZeneca, a leading global pharmaceutical company.
• M. Roy Schwarz, MD - Former Dean of the University of Colorado School of Medicine, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and Senior Vice President of Medical Education and Science at the American Medical Association; former President, China Medical Board of New York, a private foundation established by the Rockefeller Foundation that has developed world class, western science- based medical schools in China, Thailand, Laos, Nepal, Myanmar, Vietnam and Mongolia.   
• Eve E. Slater, MD - Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine, Columbia University; formerly Senior Vice President, Worldwide Policy at Pfizer and Senior Vice President for External Policy at Merck; former Assistant Secretary for Health, US Department of Health and Human Services.

The Board will also include, as ex officio, non-voting members and corporate officers, the three ACRES Co-Founders: Greg Koski of Harvard University, former director of the US Office for Human Research Protections; Beat Widler, Partner at Widler and Schiemann, Ltd, former Head of Global Quality for Hoffmann-La Roche; and Andrew Olmsted, Executive Vice President of Research Dataware, the technology-focused company of the WIRB-Copernicus Group.

"Our organization will benefit tremendously from the extensive, multi-sector experience of this exceptional board", said ACRES President Greg Koski.  "Individually and collectively the members bring expertise from every critical domain—ethics, medicine, academics, regulatory affairs, global policy, industry, informatics, standards, accreditation and finance--all with a global perspective." 

In addition to the Board of Directors, the Global Advisory Board will guide development of the ACRES Global Network through implementation of its Foundation Initiatives.

Advisors include leaders of ACRES' regional presence, Jean-Paul Deslypere (Asia), Joao Massud (Latin America), and Norbert Clemens (Europe), along with key thought-leaders Steve Sonstein (Eastern Michigan University and the Consortium of Academic Programs in Clinical Research), Craig Lipset (Pfizer), Alberto Grignolo (Parexel), Peter Alterman (SAFE-BioPharma), Guy Mascaro (Metrics Champion Consortium), Al Pacino (HealthCare Point), and independent life-sciences attorney, Leslie Platt (Leslie Platt and Associates, LLC).

The Advisory Board will be chaired by ACRES' Vice President for System Integration and Professionalism, Honorio Silva, MD, formerly Vice-President for Science and Medical Professional Development at Pfizer and current President of the Inter-American Foundation for Clinical Research.

ACRES is working together with stakeholders and like-minded organizations world-wide to develop site-accreditation standards, launch safety and quality initiatives, and to build a global technology network to support the clinical research system and its oversight. ACRES will enhance safety, quality and efficiency while reducing the cost and time required to responsibly deliver new medical products and better health to the people of the world.

"Our Directors and Advisors are systems-oriented innovators and proven leaders who are used to dealing with challenges on a global scale," added Silva, "but most importantly, they are committed to meeting these challenges in a socially responsible way." ______________________________________________________________ 

About ACRES

ACRES is a private, non-profit, multi-sector organization operating in the public-interest, aligning ethical principles and good business practices to address critical challenges to restore investor, regulatory, and public confidence in clinical research in a socially responsible manner and. 

For Further Information

More information about ACRES and its initiatives is available at www.acresglobal.net.

Global Headquarters: One Broadway, 14^th Floor, Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA, 02142.

Contact: Dr. Greg Koski, +1-617-869-8101, [email protected]

SOURCE Alliance for Clinical Research Excellence and Safety (ACRES)