J&J appoints medical school to be independent reviewer of data access

Johnson & Johnson has selected Yale School of Medicine in the US as the arbiter of requests for access to clinical trial data held by the pharma company.

As part of moves towards greater transparency of its drug development data, J&J will have no control over the individual decisions made by the Yale Open Data Access Project ("YODA") on applications to see the information, which will be made by scientists wishing to study the safety, efficacy and other information about proprietary drugs.

"There are great insights that are residing within these data. It really will be game-changing."

Professor Harlan Krumholz, Yale School of Medicine, YODA project lead, talking to Bloomberg.

"The medical scientific community and population at large want to have more transparency on what we do.

"To get really credible, we took the leap ... [to set up an] independent way to make sure people get access to the data."

Paul Stoffels, chief scientific officer, Johnson & Johnson, quoted by The Wall Street Journal.

Related news:

J&J sets drug data free in 'YODA' collaboration with Yale (Bloomberg).

J&J chooses Yale to review requests for clinical drug data (Reuters).

J&J to share drug research data in pact with Yale (The Wall Street Journal).